








Class / 1 - 

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THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE 



THE SPIRIT 
OF SERVICE 

AND OTHER STORIES 
BY ROSS ELLIS 



THE INLAND TRADE PRESS 
COMPANY :: CHICAGO :: 1914 




' £ 4Y-S- 

-S 


Copyright, 1915, by 
The Inland Trade Press Company 
Chicago 


FEB 19 1915 

© 01 A 8 !) 1 7 8 5 

uo, 


Author’s Preface 


T HE stories which make up this little book 
have appeared, during the past year, in 
The Inland Stationer — Business Equip- 
ment Journal. They are now being placed in 
more permanent form at the instance of Mr. 
A. H. McQuilkin, the editor of that sterling 
trade magazine. 

For these tales the author claims no literary 
merit. They are based, for the most part, on 
actual experiences of salesmen he has known 

1 1 In various situations, round the world. ’ ’ 

Considered from that viewpoint — merely as 
a record of some of the many problems that all 
salesmen have to solve — the book may furnish 
mild entertainment to minds commercially in- 
clined, even though they find their chief amuse- 
ment in poking holes in the solutions offered by 
Messrs. Greer, Lane, Grayson, Blair, et al. 


ROSS ELLIS. 



CONTENTS 


Page 

The Spirit of Service 1 

Plugging for Profits 20 

The Livest Wire 35 

A Question of Ethics 53 

The Inside Game 73 

The Intensive Idea 90 

Service 106 

The Miracle 122 

A Family Affair 135 

Jerry Lane Grows Up 154 

The Old Order Changeth . . 170 

A Problem of Policy 185 

The Bald Spot 209 



The Spirit of Service 



S I sealed the envelope of my nightly let- 


ter to The House, a shadow fell across 


A A the writing-room desk. I looked up into 
the moon-like countenance of Louis Greer, the 
Paragon Paper Company’s elephantine sales- 
man. Louis casts considerable shadow, for he 
is over six feet tall and as wide as a barn door. 
He was smoking a cigarette, and the slender 
roll of tobacco and rice paper appeared totally 
inadequate to supply solace to so huge a bulk. 

“Fed yourself yet?” he queried. 

“No, but I shall as soon as I drop this in the 
mail -box.” I indicated the envelope. “Come 
along. We’ll have to hurry or the dining-room 
will be closed.” 

Greer shook his head in emphatic negation. 
“No more of this hotel’s grub for me. I can 
taste my breakfast yet. Get your overcoat and 
I’ll take you down to Emil’s Chop House. It’s 
the only place in Tenneytown where they know 
how to feed a grown man. Anyhow, I want to 
talk to you.” 


2 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 


The hotel chef hadn’t made a hit with me, 
either, so I jumped at the invitation. An hour 
later when a three-inch steak and various other 
viands had been disposed of, Louis proceeded 
to talk. 

“Pm what you might call a professional 
man now,” he volunteered, looking at me quiz- 
zically through a cloud of cigar smoke. 



“1 reckon I ought to lurite ‘ B. DS after my na.me.” 


“Split with the Paragon crowd!” 

“Oh, no; it’s just a side-line with me. But 
it’s a regular profession, believe me, kid! I 
reckon I ought to write ‘B. D.’ after my name.” 

“Meaning what!” 

‘ ‘ Business Doctor , 9 9 chuckled the giant. 6 ‘ If 
your business is sick, send for old Doc Louis. 
No cure, no pay.” 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 


3 


I laughed and waited for the explanation, 
which I knew was sure to he forthcoming. 

“I’ve just been treating a pretty bad case,” 
continued Greer, “and I’m inclined to think 
I’ve effected a cure. At least the worst symp- 
toms have disappeared. Want to hear about 
it?” 

I did, and I said so. Louis differs from the 
average monologist in that he usually has some- 
thing to say. The story that he told me on this 
occasion seemed worth recording. 

“The patient,” he began, “was The Weller 
Stationery Company — the concern I’d been 
counting on for my biggest business in Tenney- 
town. As you know, I haven ’t made this terri- 
tory in two years; but in the old days Luke 
Weller was my best customer in a hundred 
miles. Luke passed to his reward shortly after 
I was transferred to New England ; but his son 
Peter continued the business. I had known 
Peter as a sort of pallid understudy of his 
father, and we had been rather friendly, so I 
saw no reason why I shouldn’t land him for a 
chunky order. According to the sales man- 
ager’s records, we had been getting an occa- 
sional order from Weller, though, of course, 


4 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE . 


nothing like what I used to send in. The only 
way to get your share of a concern’s business 
is to go after it, and no Paragon salesman had 
been through this territory since my last trip. 

“Well, when I landed here this morning I 
registered at the hotel, had a bum breakfast, 
and started out to make up the two years I had 
lost. I always like to begin my day with a nice 
bit of business, so I passed up all other possi- 
bilities and headed straight for Weller’s old 
stand. Half a block away I got a sort of pre- 
monitory chill. Young Weller had painted the 
store front a glaring yellow, and that is a color 
I do not care for in a newspaper, a man or a 
business. When I saw the windows I stopped 
and stared. Then I swore. Oh, believe me, I 
had cause to ! 

“You know our 'Paragon Packet’? I 
thought you would. We’ve made it familiar to 
every reader of magazine advertisements in 
this country as the best assortment of high- 
grade letter-paper, correspondence-cards and 
envelopes that a dollar can buy. We’ve spent 
a lot of money on our advertising, and we’ve 
backed up that advertising with unvarying 
quality of goods. The result is that the ‘ Packet’ 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 


5 


is a standard. The stationer can stock it with 
absolute safety. Our advertising insures the 
demand, and our standardized price of one dol- 



lar insures his profit. It has been a good thing 
for everybody — manufacturer, wholesaler, re- 
tailer and the public. 

“I was mad enough to smash something 
when I saw one of the yellow windows of that 
yellow store filled with a pile of Paragon 


6 


TILE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 


Packets, and on top of them a yellow sign, which 
read : ‘ Everywhere else one dollar. Our price, 
89c. Other bargains inside.’ 

“I jammed my hat down over my eyes and 
waltzed into the store looking for trouble. A 
pasty-faced clerk — a conceited-looking whiffet 
he was — stopped admiring himself in a hand- 
mirror long enough to ask me what I wanted. 

“ ‘Mr. Weller,’ I snapped out. 

“ ‘Not down yet,’ says he, and then went 
back to his private beauty show. 

‘ ‘ ‘ When is he due ! ’ I barked. 

“ ‘When he gets here,’ he answered with a 
supercilious smile, and I reached across the 
show-case and grabbed that pert young man by 
the neck. I didn’t hurt him at all, but no doubt 
I looked like battle, murder and sudden death. 

“ ‘When is Mr. Weller due!’ I repeated 
gently, and this time there wasn’t any flippancy 
in the reply. He gasped out that the Boss 
would arrive in about an hour, so I let go the 
neck and sat down in a chair toward the rear of 
the store to wait. There were two other clerks, 
but neither they nor my late victim seemed to 
care to talk to me; so I sat there in solitary 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE . 7 

grandeur and thought up mean things to say to 
Weller. 

“It was the first time Pd ever known the 
price of the Packet to be cut, and it certainly 
riled me. Of course you know why I was sore. 



You know what it means to a standard, widely 
advertised article to have any concern start to 
slashing the price. It means ruination of busi- 
ness in that locality. The other merchants must 
either make a corresponding cut or lose sales, 


8 


TEE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 



‘ The business is falling off terribly.’ 


and if they do cut they can’t make a proper 
profit. In either case they are better off if they 
do not handle the article in question, and in 
the end they don’t handle it. I could see visions 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 


9 


of our trade in this section being wiped out, and 
you can be sure the prospect wasn’t pleasant. 

“But it’s hard for me to stay angry for 
more than thirty minutes at a stretch. Pretty 
soon I cooled down a bit and began to watch the 
run of business in the store. As I watched I 
got more and more interested — so much so 
that I didn’t mind in the least when Weller 
failed to appear at the end of the stipulated 
hour. As a matter of fact, he didn’t arrive 
until nearly noon, and long before that time I 
was pitying him. When he came in, instead of 
jumping down his throat as I had originally 
planned to, I shook hands as cordially as you 
please. He ’s a tall, thin, nervous-looking chap, 
is Peter Weller, with a boyish mouth and a wor- 
ried expression about the eyes. He said he was 
glad to see me, and we started upstairs to his 
office, which overlooks the floor. 

“ ‘Well, Peter,’ says I, ‘how goes the 
battle f ’ 

“ ‘Bad, Louis, bad,’ he confessed. ‘The 
business is falling off terribly. I’m going be- 
hind all the time. ’ 

“ ‘I see you are able to keep bankers’ hours 
— and then some,’ I joked him. ‘Never in his 


10 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 


life did your father reach the store as late as 
this.’ 

“ ‘ Dad never acted as outside salesman, ’ he 
explained. ‘I’ve got a good man in charge of 
the floor, and I spend most of my time trying to 
dig up business outside. ’ 

“ ‘Which is your good man?’ I was curious 
to know. 

“ ‘Amos Dibby — that light-haired fellow 
talking to a customer at the magazine-stand,’ 
and he pointed out the very clerk whose neck I 
had massaged some hours earlier. It wasn’t 
any surprise, for I had guessed he was in charge 
from his manner toward the other clerks. 

“I didn’t say any more until we were seated 
in Weller’s office. I handed Peter a first-class 
cigar, lighted one myself, told him how genu- 
inely sorry I was to hear of his father’s death, 
and then I opened up on him. 

“ ‘So trade is falling off, is it?’ I commented. 
‘How do you account for it?’ 

“Peter shook his head in a dubious sort of 
way, and the worried lines about his eyes deep- 
ened. ‘I don’t know what causes it, unless it’s 
the war in Europe. Business gets worse and 
worse. It looks like we’re in for a hard winter.’ 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 


11 


u ‘Do you think you are helping matters any 
by slashing prices on Paragon Packets f ’ 

“He wriggled nervously in his chair. Evi- 
dently he knew I had a license to be sore, for 
immediately he began defending himself. ‘I 
had to do something, and Dibby thought a cut 
on a well-known article like the Packet would 
be a trade-puller. Amos came to me from a 
drug store where they handled stationery on 
the side, and he says they used to work that 
plan very successfully in the toilet-supply de- 
partment. You use the cut price as a bait to 
draw customers into the store, and then you sell 
them other things as well.’ 

“I coughed professionally. ‘ You should 
have sent for a doctor — a business doctor. , 

“Young Weller stared at me. ‘What are 
you talking about V he demanded. 

‘ ‘ Then I turned loose on him in earnest : 

“ ‘Peter, this may sound like a joke to you, 
but I never was farther from joking in my 
life. Your business is sick, and you can’t any 
more cure a sick business with cut prices than 
you can a sick body with morphine injections. 
They are both drugs — habit-forming drugs — 


12 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 


and they leave the patient in worse condition 
after each dose/ 

“ ‘I’ll boost sales,’ he argued sullenly. 

“ ‘You will not,’ I shot back at him; ‘at 
least, not in the long run. For a brief period 
the price-cutter may take business away from 
his competitors, but that is offset by the fact 
that his sales must be enormously increased to 
make the same net profit. Also, he establishes 
in the mind of the public the feeling that when 
it pays him full prices for any standard article 
it is getting stung. Price-cutting is a confes- 
sion of weakness, either in the goods or the 
selling organization. There’s nothing weak 
about the Packet, so I’ll give you one guess as 
to where the trouble is.’ 

‘ ‘ That got a rise out of him. ‘ My organiza- 
tion is all right,’ he shouted, ‘and I’ll have you 
to know that I paid full price for those Packets, 
and it’s none of your affair if I give ’em away 
as a premium with every five-cent purchase! 
You’re strong for telling me what not to do to 
build up business, but I notice you don’t come 
forward with any better plan.’ 

“ ‘I can do that, too, Peter,’ I said quietly. 
‘While waiting for you I jotted down a list of 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 


13 


the symptoms of the disease that is slowly but 
steadily killing your business, and if you want 
me to, I’ll diagnose the case and prescribe a 
remedy as well. ’ 

“I took a note-book from my pocket and 
studied some memoranda I had made. It was 
rather ragged stuff, but I knew I could piece it 
out from memory. ‘Here is a partial record of 
customers who came in the store this morning 
and went out again without having made a pur- 
chase. I noted only the most suggestive inci- 
dents. ’ 

“Weller pricked up his ears at this, as I 
knew he would. There are mighty few mer- 
chants who wouldn’t be interested in such a 
record. ‘Let’s see it,’ he demanded. 

“ ‘It’s in shorthand,’ I told him; ‘but I’ll 
translate for you. The first customer I noticed 
was a prosperous-appearing, middle-aged man, 
who came to the magazine-stand and asked for 
the Columbian Weekly. The clerk said you 
didn’t carry it. The customer, apparently sur- 
prised, asked why not. The clerk replied that it 
was a Catholic publication, and added, gratui- 
tously, that it ought to be suppressed. The 


14 


TEE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 


customer looked at him curiously, but said 
nothing — and bought nothing. ’ 

“Weller smothered a cuss-word. ‘It’s a 
subscription proposition and there is practically 
no call for it on the stand — that’s why I don’t 
carry it,’ he said. ‘Dibby belongs to some Anti- 
Papal society, though, and I guess he likes to 
air his views. Still, the loss of a magazine sale 
isn’t very serious. You’ll have to come stronger 
than that. ’ 

“ ‘ Figure twenty-five per cent of Tenney- 
town’s population as being of Catholic affilia- 
tions and you will not miss it far, ’ I remarked. 
4 Quite a lot of people to risk antagonizing, isn’t 
it? But we’ll pass on to the next case: 

“ ‘ Customer No. 2 was a young matron with 
a five-year-old daughter, and she wanted a few 
white crayons for the youngster’s toy black- 
board. How many? Oh, just a few. A nickel’s 
worth, perhaps. The clerk asked Dibby if he 
might break a box of fifty. Dibby said “Cer- 
tainly not,” and the lady departed, comforting 
the crying child with the assurance that they 
would go to the Tenneytown Stationery Com- 
pany, where she knew they would accommodate 
her.’ 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 


15 


“Weller laughed. ‘No harm done there. I 
should worry about the loss of a five-cent order. 
You’ll have to come stronger yet.’ 

“ ‘How about the next time she needs sta- 
tionery, or magazines, or Kodak films, or any of 
the lines you sell? However, consider the next 
customer : 

“ ‘Pie wanted a fountain-pen, and he wanted 
a Plexus self -filler, because he had carried one 
for two years and he liked it. Your clerk did 
not have the Plexus, but he had others fully 
equal to it. Instead of extolling their merits, 
he devoted his argument to the proposition that 
the Plexus was worthless. The customer went 
away penless and with the angry countenance of 
one who has heard a good friend maligned.’ 

“Peter nodded gravely. ‘I begin to see 
what you are driving at. Any more?’ 

‘ ‘ ‘ Customer No. 4 was in a great hurry. He 
wanted a black record Oliver typewriter ribbon 
sent up to his office. The clerk said he didn’t 
believe you had any, and he insisted that the 
customer wait until he found out. Perhaps five 
minutes were spent in pawing over stock, and 
the clerk proved to he right. You had no black 


16 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 


record. The customer rushed away, evidently 
impatient because he had wasted so much time. ’ 

“ ‘But if we didn’t have the ribbon, what 
could we doT questioned Weller. ‘I follow you 
on the other cases, but here it looks to me like 
pure ill-luck . 9 

“ ‘Ill-luck that your delivery-boy could have 
remedied by stepping into the Typewriter Sup- 
ply Company three blocks away/ I retorted. 
‘Your failure to make a profit on the trans- 
action would have been more than offset by the 
reputation for service which you would have 
established with your customer. As it is he’ll 
pass you by next time he is in a hurry.’ I 
glanced again at my note-book. ‘Customer 
No. 5 ’ 

“Peter Weller held up his hand. ‘That’s 
enough,’ he said. ‘I want to think this situa- 
tion over.’ He was silent for quite a long time 
and I smoked my cigar and waited. Finally he 
looked me square in the eye. ‘Will you swear 
that everything you’ve told me actually hap- 
pened?’ 

“ ‘I don’t need to,’ I laughed. ‘You know 
they happened, and you know that similar things 
have been happening right along. You’ve seen 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 


17 


them, but you’ve never thought about them. 
They didn’t seem important to you. You 
thought, because you had a nice building and 
stock and show-cases and clerks and a bank bal- 
ance, that you had a business. You had only a 
store — a background for a business. The spirit 
that makes a business a living, growing thing is 
the spirit of service, and no enterprise can be 
permanently successful in which that spirit is 
not predominant. In your establishment, to- 
day, it is almost nonexistent. The result is that 
your business is in its last gasp, though your 
store is a pleasure to behold, after you get 
inside — I don’t like that yellow front, Peter.’ 
I stopped to see how he was taking it. 

“ ‘Go on,’ he said. 4 Give me the straight 
goods.’ I took him at his word. 

“ ‘Can you imagine your father insulting a 
man who wanted to buy a magazine?’ I asked 
him, ‘ or letting a child go away in tears because 
he didn’t want to open a box of crayons? Why, 
he ’d have made that youngster happy with some 
little paper novelty — not from policy but out 
of the pure goodness of his heart — and the 
mother would have gone away with the crayons 
she came for and a warm feeling of friendliness 


18 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 


for old Luke Weller. The man who liked the 
Plexus pen would have been, to your father’s 
way of thinking, a penless individual whose 
needs it was his duty and pleasure to supply. 
To the man who wanted the typewriter ribbon 
he would have said: 4 ‘We’ll send it right up,” 
and he would have made good if the ribbon was 
to be found in Tenneytown.’ 

“Young Weller nodded. ‘That’s right,’ he 
said in a husky sort of voice. ‘That was Dad’s 
way of doing business, sure enough.’ 

“ ‘And you can’t find a better way,’ I told 
him. ‘Just copy those methods and you will not 
find it necessary to cut prices in order to lure 
customers inside your doors. They’ll come and 
gladly pay you your honest, legitimate profit, 
and they’ll come again and bring their friends.’ 
I paused long enough to light another cigar. 

“ ‘There, Peter,’ I said, ‘is my diagnosis of 
your business ills and my prescription for their 
cure. My medicine will not cure in twenty-four 
hours ; but if you take it faithfully I’ll stake my 
professional reputation on the result. Some 
minor operations may be necessary — the am- 
putation of a head or two would do no harm — 
but surgery is out of my line. ’ 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 


19 


“ ‘What’s your fee, Doctor?’ asked Weller 
with a sheepish grin. I could see that the refer- 
ences to his father had moved him deeply. He 
was just beginning to realize what a mess he 
had made of the solid business that old Luke 
had left him. 

“ ‘My fee,’ I said, ‘is the cancellation of that 
cut-price sign in the window, and your word of 
honor that never again will you advertise or sell 
the Paragon Packet at less than the standard 
retail price of one dollar.’ 

“ ‘That’s not a fee,’ he objected. ‘That’s 
part of the medicine. ’ 

“ ‘Oh, well,’ I laughed, ‘if you feel that way 

about it ’ And I pulled out my trusty 

order-book. ’ ’ 

From a capacious pocket Louis produced 
the book in question and tossed it across the 
table to me. ‘ ‘ Feast your eyes, kid ! ” he invited. 
I made no attempt to conceal my amazement and 
admiration at the totals under the name of The 
Weller Stationery Company. It was a man-size 
order — the kind that a salesman books only 
once in a blue moon. 

“Some fee!” chuckled Big Louis, “Eh, 
what?” 


i 


Plugging for Profits 

“ T’M sorry, Jimmy,” and the gray-bearded old 
I stationer smiled in a way that took most of 
■** the sting ont of the refusal. “Your work 
has been all right, youVe been on the job every 
day, rain or shine, the customers seem to like 
you, and you’re the sort of youngster I want to 
have in the store ; but I’m afraid you’ve reached 
the salary limit. The money simply isn ’t here. ’ ’ 
The round-faced, solidly built young fellow 
who stood beside the roll-top desk which consti- 
tuted the office of the Davenport Stationery 
Company squared his shoulders. Some of the 
twinkle faded from his alert blue eyes, and his 
smile was not quite so spontaneous as usual ; 
but he was not yet ready to admit defeat. 

“Mr. Davenport,” he persisted, “you say, 
yourself, that I’m as good a salesman as Davis, 
and I’m certainly handling more of the business 
than he was when he left you. You paid him 
thirty dollars a week, while I’m getting only 
twenty. It doesn’t seem exactly fair; espe- 
cially,” he added, a little vindictively, “as I’m 
( 20 ) 


PLUGGING FOR PROFITS . 


21 


trying to make my success right here, and not 
working in with the customers with the idea of 
starting an opposition store/ ’ 

"Quite true, all of it,” agreed his employer; 
"but as I said before, the money isn’t here. 



Davis’ new store was bound to cut into the vol- 
ume of our business; yet I didn’t really believe 
he could take as much of the trade as he has. 
Worse than that, he has slashed prices on sta- 
ples to a point where there ’s mighty little money 


22 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 


in a lot of the sales we do make. You know that 
as well as I do. The estimated profits for last 
month are nearly two hundred dollars less than 
for the corresponding month last year, and they 
have been running about the same way ever 
since Davis started in business. If we’re to 
show any profit at all at the end of the year I’ll 
have to think of cutting down my overhead 
expense rather than increasing it.” 

Jimmie Blake’s smile disappeared alto- 
gether. He wanted that extra ten dollars a week, 
he wanted it badly and he wanted it quickly. 
With that assured he could do a lot of things 
otherwise impossible. Most important of all, he 
could sternly demand the fulfillment of a prom- 
ise which a certain girl had given him on a won- 
derful evening six months before. Mr. Daven- 
port had seemed so pleased by the manner in 
which he had brought order out of the chaos 
caused by the stormy and unheralded departure 
of Davis, that for several months he had been 
secretly expecting to have his salary raised 
without the necessity of asking for it. Now he 
felt discouraged, defeated; but the instinct 
which made him valuable behind the counter 
helped him to extract even from temporary 


PLUGGING FOR PROFITS. 


23 


defeat whatever promise of future victory it 
might hold. 

“Of course,’ ’ he said slowly, “I can’t expect 
you to pay me more than the business will stand, 
and I don’t want you to think I haven’t been 
doing my best, or what I thought was my best. 
But tell me: if I can scheme out some way to 
get the business and the profits back to where 
they were before Davis left, do I get the raise!” 

“You certainly do,” cried the old man, 
heartily, rising and tugging at the cover of his 
desk. “I’m glad to hear you talk that way. 
Most clerks seem to forget that a business is run 
primarily for profit, and that their own welfare 
depends on the welfare of their employer. Now, 
I’ll tell you what I’m prepared to offer: From 
this time on, for every month in which the esti- 
mated profits equal those of the corresponding 
month last year, I’ll give you the same salary 
Davis got. I’ll do more than that. If you can 
increase the business to last year’s level you 
can do more, and out of every dollar we make 
above the profits of last year — profits, mind 
you, not gross sales — I’ll credit you with 
twenty-five cents. That puts it squarely up to 
you. You know the principles of this house — 


24 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 


honesty toward customer, wholesaler and manu- 
facturer. Within those limits I’ll back you as 
far as you want to go.” Glancing at his watch, 
he hurried out of the store before Blake could 
find words to express his varied emotions. 

That evening, seated close beside her on a 
cozy sofa in the not too well lighted parlor, 
he told Gertrude Schafer all about it. Miss 
Schafer, known to her intimates as “Trudie,” 
was quite willing to believe that anything good 
might happen to her wonderful Jimmie; but 
the four years she had spent as stenographer 
for the Blauden Milling Machine Company, 
while they had not dimmed the brightness of 
her eye nor faded the roses in her cheeks, had 
given her mind a practical turn. 

“It sounds fine,” she admitted, in response 
to young Blake’s eager demand for her con- 
gratulations; “but, Jimmie, Mr. Davis isn’t 
going to shut up shop just because we wish he 
would, and unless he does I don’t quite see 
where you are to get this additional business.” 

“I can do it on specialties,” said Jimmie, 
valiantly. ‘ ‘ There are plenty of things we keep 
in stock and never bring out unless a customer 
asks for them that ought to be in every office in 


PLUGGING FOR PROFITS. 


25 


this town ; and I believe I can put 'em there if 
I go out and hustle. Check protectors, for 
instance. When Jamieson's grocery was stuck 



“ It sounds -fine,” she admitted. 


five hundred dollars on a raised check last June, 
we sold seven of those Empire protectors in one 
day, just to people who came in the store. I'll 
bet I could have sold three or four times as 


26 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE . 


many if I’d gone out to see the people who 
didn’t come in. I’ve got a free hand now, and 
I’m going to see if I can’t replace all the old, 
worn-out equipment in Millville with new, up-to- 
date stuff.” 

“I told Mr. Blauden to-day that we simply 
had to have a new typewriter,” said Gertrude, 
thoughtfully. “Why can’t you sell it to him?” 

“We have the agency for the Bapatype, and 
we placed one on trial in your office over a year 
ago. You said you’d rather use the old machine 
than fool with one you didn’t understand. 
That’s why.” 

“Oh, I’ll learn this time,” she laughed. 
“Jimmie, is the machine any good? How much 
do you make on each one ? ’ ’ 

“It’s the best machine on the market, and 
I’ll make twenty-five dollars on the sale if I 
don’t have to allow Blauden too much for that 
bunch of junk you’ve been pounding for the 
past four years.” 

“It is a bunch of junk,” sighed Trudie. 
“See what it’s done to the ends of my fingers.” 

“Pretty fingers,” murmured Blake, pos- 
sessing himself of the members in question, and 


PLUGGING FOR PROFITS. 


27 


for a time the affairs of the Davenport Station- 
ery Company were forgotten. 

As usual, it was the practical Miss Schafer 
who recalled Jimmie to the world of work-a- 
days, and she did it with a question. 

“What,” she suddenly demanded, “is your 
biggest trouble in selling Rapatypes? It’s get- 
ting the stenographers to use and recommend 
them, isn ’t it ? ’ ’ 

“It certainly is,” agreed Blake. “Most of 
the stenographers in Millville learned to oper- 
ate a Champion, because that’s what they use at 
the Business College. The result is that the 
Champion people get about all the business 
there is, even though the machine is a cumber- 
some affair with a touch like one of those 
strength testers they have at the county fairs. 
A girl can do twice the work on a Rapatype 
without getting half so tired. But it’s no use. 
The keyboard is not quite the same, and they 
simply will not take the trouble to learn any- 
thing new. Of course, you’re different,” he 
added hastily. 

“No, I’m not different. Not a bit,” she said 
honestly. “I didn’t learn your old Rapatype, 
either, though it was there in the office for over 


28 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE . 


a month. But now I’ll learn it because you’ve 
made me want to, and if the machine is all you 
say it is I’ll love it for its own sake. Now if 
you could just figure out some way to make the 
other stenographers want to learn to operate 
the new machine the rest ought to be easy, for 
the Champion certainly does make one’s arms 
ache. But don’t let me catch you making love 
to any one else, young man ! ’ ’ 

“Oh, I’ll figure it out,” boasted the happy 
Jimmie. And that night he did. 

Bright and early the next morning he car- 
ried a shining new Bapatype to the office of the 
Blauden Milling Machine Company. Assured 
of the approval of his stenographer, it was easy 
to convince Mr. Blauden of the merits of the 
new typewriter, and when Blake left the office 
he had in his pocket order-book a sale memoran- 
dum which covered not only the Bapatype but 
an Empire check protector as well. This was 
gratifying, but not unexpected. Mr. Blauden 
had previously expressed an interest in the 
check protector, and, as Jimmie told himself, 
the credit for the typewriter sale really belonged 
to Trudie Schafer. 


PLUGGING FOR PROFITS. 


29 


The Grey Drill & Seeder Co. was the next 
stop on his route, and here Blake took the first 
steps toward putting into execution the plan he 



" What’s the best speed you ever got out of that old ice-wagon? ” 

had decided on in the wakeful hours of the night 
before. Miss Millie Trent, the stenographer, 
was an unusually skilful operator, inordinately 
proud of her speedy fingers. When Blake 
opened the office door she stopped her rapid 
rat-a-tat-tat on the keyboard of the ancient 
Champiotf and smiled a welcome, for Gertrude 


30 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE . 


Schafer was not the only Millville damsel in 
whose sight the dashing Jimmie had found 
favor. 

“That was quite a tune you were playing 
when I came in,” Blake greeted her. “Millie, 
what’s the best speed you ever got out of that 
old ice-wagon?” 

“Once I did five hundred and sixteen words 
in five minutes by Mr. Grey’s watch,” she in- 
formed him proudly, “and I guess I’ll average 
pretty close to seventy-five words a minute from 
my notes when there isn’t any tabulation or too 
many hard names. Why ? ’ ’ 

“Oh, it struck me that you could qualify for 
one of the prizes the Davenport Stationery 
Company is offering for the best typists in Mill- 
ville. Any time you can come down to our office 
and show a speed of seventy-five words a min- 
ute on the No. 5 Bapatype, you can get a dandy 
manicure set that would cost you at least five 
dollars if you had to buy it. ’ ’ 

Millie’s rather pale eyes lighted up with the 
fire of acquisitiveness. 

“Why, I could do that as easy as rolling off 
a log, ’ ’ she declared. Then her brow wrinkled. 
“That keyboard is a little different, though, and 


PLUGGING FOP PROFITS. 


31 


I’d have to practice a bit. Could I go down to 
your store at noons for a week or so, Jimmie, 
and work with the machine until I got my 
hand in?” 

“We’ll do better than that,” Blake assured 
her, with difficulty restraining the only impulse 
to hug her angular shoulders that had ever 
affected him. “We’ll send you down a new 
Rapatype on a month’s free trial, and you can 
take your test whenever you’re ready. Then, 
when you get ready to buy a new machine, you’ll 
know how the Rapatype compares with the 
Champion.” 

‘ 4 That isn’t going to be so very long, either, ’ ’ 
she commented. “I have been intending for 
some time to put in a requisition for a new 
Champion; but now I guess I’ll wait and see 
what the Rapatype is like. ’ ’ 

Varying in details, but much the same in 
essentials, were Blake’s experiences in most of 
the other offices he visited. He reached the store 
pledged to deliver eleven machines on thirty 
days’ trial, and with the firm conviction that 
this time the Rapatype would get a thorough 
test. Of the result of a real comparison with 
the cumbersome Champion he had little doubt, 


32 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE . 


and he felt confident that a fair percentage of 
the sales were as good as made. That evening 
he ordered from a wholesale house two dozen 
manicure sets of a quality calculated to attract 
the feminine eye, and he astonished the Rapa- 
type Typewriter Company with a telegraphic 
rush order for a dozen machines on consignment 
account. 

“Jimmie,” called Mr. Davenport at about 
six o’clock one afternoon two months later, 
“come back here. I want to talk to you. ’ ’ 

Again young Blake stood beside the roll-top 
desk which constituted the office of the Daven- 
port Stationery Company. 

“Here are a couple of documents that may 
interest you , 9 9 remarked his employer in a care- 
fully casual tone, passing up two folded papers, 
indorsed, respectively, September, 1912, and 
September, 1913. 

Jimmie opened the two papers with trem- 
bling fingers, glanced at the totals and laid the 
sheets back on the desk. 

“Well,” he commented with an effort at 
nonchalance, “we don’t seem to be falling 
behind, anyhow.” 


PLUGGING FOR PROFITS. 


33 


“Falling behind!” shouted the old stationer, 
‘ ‘ why, yon young rascal, we ’re almost two hun- 
dred dollars ahead of last September, and that 
was the banner month of our best year, and 
that’s after crediting you with thirty dollars a 
week for the month. On top of that, you’ll get 
a dividend of nearly fifty dollars, and from the 
way October is opening up I believe we’ll do 
just about as well; but your typewriter cam- 
paign will be about played out by the end of this 
month. What are you planning to do to boost 
the November sales?” 

‘ 4 1 have a sort of crazy scheme, ’ ’ said Blake, 
modestly; “but if you don’t mind, I’d rather 
not talk about it until I get it in more definite 
shape. ’ ’ 

“All right, my boy,” agreed his employer. 
“Tell me when you get good and ready. I’ll 
warrant it’s a winner, anyhow. Come up to my 
house for dinner to-night. Mrs. Davenport has 
some nieces visiting her who are mighty nice 
girls. I want you to meet them. ” 

Would Jimmie spend that evening of tri- 
umph in talking to a lot of strange girls? Well, 
hardly! “I’m sorry, Mr. Davenport,” he mut- 


34 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 


tered confusedly; “but — but I have to see a 
man. Important business.” 

Ten minutes later he was waiting on the 
corner which Trudie Schafer must pass on her 
way home from work. 


The Livest Wire 


L OOK! Look! Look! It costs you nothing 
to look!” 

The lanky young man who had been 
admiring the window display of the Live Wire 
Stationery Company dropped his grip and 
stared about him with a startled expression in 
his round, brown eyes. 

1 ‘ Come in ! Come in ! Come in ! Everything 
for the office. All the latest devices. Just 
inside. Come in ! Come in ! Come in ! ’ 1 

This time the lanky young man located the 
source of the mysterious invitation. Above the 
door protruded the horn of a phonograph, and 
even as he watched it the cylinder whirred and 
the raucous voice bellowed again : 

“ Right inside! Right inside! Right inside! 
It costs you nothing to look. Don ’t stop ! Don ’t 
hesitate! Come in! Come in! Come in!” 

“I reckon that means me,” grinned the 
lanky young man. “But shucks! I was going 
in anyhow.” 


( 35 ) 


36 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 



“ I reckon that means me.” 


THE LIVES T WIRE. 


37 


He pushed open the plate-glass door and 
stepped inside. An exceedingly smart-looking 
clerk was at his side in an instant, while six 
others of equally natty appearance stood at 
attention in front of the long showcases on 
either side of the aisle. The lanky young man 
felt that he had better explain his errand at 
once. There was an atmosphere of hurry about 
the place that forbade delay. 

“I want,” he began, “to see ” 

“Our Futurist Filing System,” interrupted 
the clerk, seizing his victim firmly by the arm, 
and propelling him toward an array of glitter- 
ing office equipment. “Observe this solid-oak 
letter cabinet. It files a million letters on edge 
for ready reference. Its joints are interlocked, 
glued and screwed. Its drawers are on roller 
bearings and fitted with autolocking compres- 
sors. It is wearproof and foolproof. If you 
file a letter in the wrong place you hear a chime 

of sweet-toned bells. It ” 

“It is a dandy, ’ ’ said the lanky young man, 

‘ ‘ but I want to see ” 

“No. 2 — Next ! ! ! ” shouted the clerk. Clerk 
No. 2 grabbed the stranger and led him a few 
steps down the aisle. 


38 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 


“You want to see the Diggem Adding 
Machine. It adds; it subtracts; it lists; it 
calculates; it does your thinking for you; it 
saves you time and clerk hire; it gets your 
statements out on the first day of every month ; 
it ” 

“No,” said the lanky young man, “I want 
to see ” 

“No. 3 — Next!!!” 

‘ 4 Pencils ! Pencils ! Pencils ! ’ ’ shrieked Clerk 
No. 3. “You want to see our Aphrodite Popu- 
lar Pencils. Prove for yourself that they are 
the best. They last longest ; they write smooth- 
est; they erase cleanest; they ” 

“Say, what’s the matter with you fellows?” 
ejaculated the lanky young man. 4 ‘ I don ’t want 
to buy anything. I want to see the Boss. I’m 
looking for a job.” 

Clerk No. 3’s enthusiasm vanished. He eyed 
the lanky young man critically, noting with dis- 
dain the ready-made clothing of rustic cut, the 
Congress gaiters, and the wide, black hat of a 
type seldom seen north of Mason and Dixon’s 
well-known line. 

‘ ‘ What kind of a j ob ? ” 

“Salesman.” 


TEE LIVEST WIRE . 


39 


Clerk No. 3 choked, gurgled, and finally 
burst out in a roar of laughter. The joke was 
entirely too good to keep to himself. 

‘ ‘ Billy, Mike, Ginger — come here ! This — 
this Beau Brummel thinks he’d make a good 
Live- Wire salesman. Whaddeyu think of his 
chances ? ’ ’ 


“ This Beau Brummel thinks he’d make a salesman.” 

Clerks Nos. 1 and 2, reenforced by a brother- 
in-arms from across the aisle, gathered about 
the lanky young man. In this brilliant company 
he looked like a weather-beaten barnyard roos- 
ter in a coop of prize-winners. 

‘ ‘ What ’s your name, son, and where did you 
drift in from?” demanded Clerk No. 1. 

“Horatio Enslee, and I’m from Darbyville, 
Alabama.” The lanky young man glared de- 
fiance at his tormentors. “I want to talk to 
your Boss.” 



40 


TEE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 


Clerk No. 1 turned to Clerk No. 2. “Didn’t 
Mr. Zing come from somewhere down that 
way?” 

“He was born and raised in Darby ville, ’ ’ 
said Horatio Enslee, “and IVe got a letter to 
him from his uncle. I reckon you-all had better 
tell me where to find him. * ’ 

At that moment the door opened to admit 
two possible customers, and the Live-Wire 
clerks sped to the attack. Clerk No. 1 flung a 
parting word over his shoulder as he ran : 

“Up the stairs to your right, son. You’ll 
find the Boss in his private office.” 

With wondering eyes Horatio watched the 
Live Wires fasten on their victims. Then, feel- 
ing like a very small cat in a strange and fear- 
some garret, he mounted the stairs. 

Peter Zing, proprietor of the Live Wire Sta- 
tionery Company, looked up impatiently from 
some papers he had been studying. He was 
shrewd-eyed, thin-lipped, and as he crouched 
over his desk he seemed poised, ready for an 
instant plunge into feverish activity. 

“Well, well, well!” he barked. “Out with 
it! I’m Zing. Wliat can I do for you?” 


THE L1VEST WIRE. 


41 


As he spoke he pressed a button on his desk, 
and immediately a bell rang on the wall of 
the office. Involuntarily, young Enslee’s eyes 
turned to the framed placard under the bell 


THIS IS MY BUSY DAY. 
BE BRIEF! 


“I’m looking for a job as salesman,” said 
the lanky young man. Surely that was brief 
enough. 



“ I have a letter for you from your uncle, William Zing.” 

“Nothing doing!” snapped Zing, after one 
appraising glance. 

That was entirely too brief. 

“I’m Horatio Enslee, from Darbyville, Ala- 
bama. I have a letter for you from your uncle, 


42 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 


William Zing. He said you’d give me a job.” 
He laid an envelope on tlie desk. 

Peter Zing frowned as he read the letter: 

Darbyville, Ala., June 1, 1914. 

Dear Nephew, — When you paid back the money I let you 
have to go North with, you told me that any time I granted you 
to do anything for me I had only to let you know. I am taking 
you at your word, and I know that the word of a Zing is as 
good as another man’s bond. Give this young man a job. He 
is honest, industrious and right smart, though he doesn’t look 
it. If he makes good — good. If he doesn’t — all right. I 
promised him you’d try him out, and I expect you to do it. 
Your Aunt Mary sends fondest love. It looks like we’d have to 
lick them Mexicans again. 

Your affectionate uncle, 

William Zing. 

“Humph!” commented the spider-like little 
man, laying down the letter and glaring at the 
youth from Darbyville. “It seems to me that 
my uncle is mighty free with his promises. 
What can you do V ’ 

Horatio Enslee shifted his weight from one 
Congress gaiter to the other. 

“I reckon I could sell stationery,” he ven- 
tured. 

“What experience have you had!” 

“I used to clerk in Mr. Samuel Whipple’s 
store down in Darbyville, and he thought I was 
a pretty good hand at selling.” 


TEE LIVE ST WIRE . 


43 


‘ ‘ Whipple ’s ! ’ ’ snorted Zing. i i That ’s a fine 
training for a place like this! I want you to 
understand, young man, that we are an organi- 
zation of Live Wires. We don’t wait for busi- 
ness to come to us — we go after it. We don’t 
ask a customer what he wants to buy — we tell 
him what we want to sell. We are the champion 
go-getters of the stationery world. We look for 
the limit and then go it six better. Get me ? ’ ’ 

“Yes, sir,” said Horatio, meekly. 

“Ideas! Ideas! Ideas! That’s our watch- 
word. Give ’em something new. Surprise ’em. 
You saw that phonograph out in front? That’s 
one idea. It pulls in the window-watchers. You 
saw the way our Live-Wire clerks shoot a cus- 
tomer along the line? That’s another idea. 
Our outside men are just as original. Here, 
I’ll show you.” 

He pushed another button on his desk. 
Instantly a police-whistle shrilled without, the 
door opened, and a plump young man entered, 
walking on his hands and blowing the whistle. 
In front of the proprietor’s desk he flipped him- 
self into the air, righted, and came down on his 
feet as lightly as a cat, smiling, debonair, master 
of himself and the situation. 


44 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE . 


“A new one, Mr. Zing,” he said compla- 
cently. “Rather neat, what? An entrance like 
that ought to make a buyer sit up and take 
notice.” 

“Excellent, Heine!” ‘Peter Zing leaped to 
his feet and shook the newcomers hand with 
enthusiasm. “It’ll hit ’em right in the eye!” 
He turned to Horatio. “Now, you see. That’s 
the way to do it. What’d you think if a sales- 
man came in to see you , walking on his hands? 
He ’d get your attention, wouldn ’t he ? Sure, he 
would. That’s the notion — get your custom- 
er’s attention. 

“Heine Baum, here, sold hats on the road 
before I got hold of him. He was a Live Wire 
then, just like he is now. He used to walk into a 
store where he wanted to introduce his line and 
ask the proprietor to show him some derbies. 
Then he ’d grab up half a dozen or so and shove 
his fist through the crown of each one. The 
proprietor would be wild, but Heine would have 
his attention. Then he would pay for the hats 
he had spoiled and be ready to talk business.” 

“Yes, and before that,” volunteered the 
beaming Heine, “I sold a line of dishes, crock- 
ery and queensware. My favorite stunt was to 


THE LIVES T WIRE. 


45 


slide into a store with two or three plates roll- 
ing up the aisle ahead of me. If they didn’t 
bust, I had a good talking point for my line. If 
they did bust — why, Pd have the proprietor’s 
attention, anyhow.” 

Peter Zing was eyeing Horatio speculatively. 

4 4 Say, young man,” he suddenly began, “I’ll 
bet you would make a good commercial contor- 
tionist. You’re long and lank and loose- jointed. 
You could rush into a customer’s office and fall 
down, all tied in a knot. Then, when he ran to 
help you, you could hand him your card, get up 
and talk business! How’s that for an idea, 
Heine?” 

4 ‘ Great,” said the Live Wire, “but I’ve got 
a better one. With his Southern accent, this 
young chap could black up and pass for a coon. 
Then he could slide into an office, do a double- 
shuffle, and ” 

“No, sir,” said Horatio, positively. “I’m 
no contortionist, and you don’t catch me pre- 
tending to be a nigger. ’ ’ 

Heine Baum backed apprehensively away 
from the young Southerner, whose big fists were 


46 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 


clenched and whose normally mild brown eyes 
were glinting dangerously. 

‘ ‘ My mistake, ’ ’ he apologized. ‘ ‘ It was just 
a suggestion, and I meant it kindly. But of 
course ” 

‘ 4 Leave him to me, Heine,” ordered the pro- 
prietor of the Live Wire Stationery Company. 
He turned to the belligerent Horatio. 

“Young man, my uncle promised you that 
I’d try you out as a salesman. He had no busi- 
ness to do it, but Fll make his word good. Fll 
try you out, all right. I HI send you to the office 
of the biggest stationery buyer in town, and I 
happen to know that at present he is in the mar- 
ket for a complete filing system — an order run- 
ning close to five hundred dollars. Our Futurist 
System is the best in the market, and you ” 

“I know all about that system,” interjected 
Horatio eagerly. “They have one in the office 
of the Darbyville Cotton Mills.” 

“Very good. Then you will be under no 
handicap. You have declined to accept some 
very clever suggestions made by Mr. Baum and 
myself. Therefore, you must have some better 
ideas of your own. You shall have an oppor- 


THE LIVEST WIRE. 


47 


tunity to demonstrate their worth. I will not 
give you another chance if you fail this time. 
The name of the customer is The Colossus Har- 
vester Company.” 

Friendly little Heine Baum spread out his 
hands in a gesture of protest. 

u Aw, don’t he so hard on the boy, Mr. Zing,” 
he begged. “He didn’t mean any harm. You 
know we haven’t a chance with those folks. 
I’ve been up there, and Woodle has been up 
there, and Ducey has been up there, and they 
simply will not do business with us. We’ve 
done everything to get the attention of Davis, 
the buyer. I walked into his office, smoking a 
trick cigar that I had timed to explode just as I 
got to his desk. He flew into a rage and fired 
me out. Woodle tried to sing him a comic song 
— and was thrown out of the office before he 
could finish the first verse. Ducey is a secretive 
cuss, and he refuses to tell what he did. But, 
anyhow, he didn’t get the business and he’s 
afraid to go back. Don’t send this boy up 
against a sticker like that. He hasn’t got a 
chance to win out. Give him a fair show. ’ ’ 

“He takes the assignment I give him, or 
none, ’ ’ said Peter Zing, icily. 


48 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE . 


Horatio Enslee looked from one to the other, 
first dubiously, then with growing confidence. 
He squared his broad shoulders. 

“Ml take it,” he announced. “I’ll go up to 
see Mr. Davis right away. ’ ’ 

“The sooner the better,” was Zing’s acid 
comment. < 4 Get the agony over. ’ 9 

As young Enslee passed out of the private 
office, the agile Heine Baum turned a hand- 
spring and alighted beside him. He was anx- 
ious to be of service. 

“Don’t go up there, kid, unless you have 
some real clever idea,” he urged. “Give me a 
little time and I’ll think up something for you — 
something new.” 

“Much obliged,” said Horatio, “but I have 
a new idea — at least I believe it’s new to this 
establishment. Probably it will not work, but 
I’m going to try it, anyhow.” 

He hurried down to the department of Clerk 
No. 1, and induced that magnificent person to 
part with a supply of Futurist literature and a 
price-list of the various designs. Then he 
stepped out on the street and asked a policeman 
to direct him to the office of The Colossus Har- 
vester Company. 


THE LIVEST WIRE. 


49 


Two hours later, the telephone on Peter 
Zing’s desk buzzed like an angry bee. 

“Is this Mr. Zing!” came a drawling voice 
over the wire. 

“Yes, yes, this is Zing. Who are you?” 

“Horatio Enslee. What shall I do next?” 

“Do next? Whaddeyu mean?” 

“It’s only a little after eleven o’clock, and I 
thought you might want me to go somewhere 
else this morning. I have the Colossus order. ’ ’ 

4 4 Y -y-you have — what?” 

4 4 The Colossus order. Shall I bring it in, or 
is there some other place you want me to go ? ” 

4 4 You — you say you have the Colossus 
order?” 

4 4 Yes, sir. That is what I said. ’ ’ There was 
a hint of exasperation in the tone. 4 4 Shall I 
bring it in, or do you want me to go somewhere 
else?” 

4 4 How much of an order ? Who signed it ? ” 
Mr. Zing was sure there must be something 
wrong somewhere. 

4 4 The order totals five hundred and sixty 
dollars, and it is signed by Hiram Davis, Pur- 
chasing Agent. Shall I bring it in, or do you 
want me to ” 


50 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE . 


“ Bring it in!” shrilled the chief Live Wire. 
He hung up the receiver and sank back in his 
chair, weakly mopping his brow. Presently he 
recovered sufficiently to send out a hurry-up call 
for Baum, Woodle and Ducey. 

When lanky Horatio Enslee entered the pri- 
vate office for the second time that day, he found 
the talented trio ranged along the wall, awaiting 
his coming, while Peter Zing, more spider-like 
than ever, crouched in his chair behind the flat 
desk with an expression of almost superhuman 
alertness on his shrewd face. 

4 ‘ First/ ’ barked the Boss, 4 ‘let me see that 
order. * ’ 

Horatio laid the precious slip of paper on 
the desk. 

Peter Zing’s eyes glowed as he inspected it. 

“Perfectly correct and satisfactory,” he 
reported. “I congratulate you. It isn’t often 
that I make a mistake in a man, but I made one 
this time. I thought you weren’t a Live Wire, 
and it turns out that you are the livest wire we 
have here. You have pulled off a stunt that all 
these other boys fell down on. I have brought 
them in here in the hope that you will tell them 
how you did it. Your relation to them is that 


THE LIVEST WIRE. 


51 


of teacher to pupils. They have much to learn 

from you. If you have no objection ” 

“Why, no,” drawled Horatio, “I’d just as 
soon tell you about it.” 

“Baum,” snapped the proprietor, “clear a 
space in front of the desk, so that Mr. Enslee 
will have a chance to demonstrate. Roll that 
rug out of the way. It’s an acrobatic stunt, I’ll 



“ I tried to behave in a manner becoming a gentleman ” 


wager.” The lanky young man held up a 
restraining hand. 

“Never mind moving the furniture,” he 
said. “I didn’t do any gymnastics, or come- 
dian work, either. I just ” 

“You gave him a box of quarter cigars,” 
accused Mr. Ducey. “I tried him with ten- 
centers, and he was insulted. He threw them 
at me.” 


52 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 


“No,” smiled Enslee, “I just ” 

“It was a good, lively song,” guessed Woo- 
dle. “A yodel might have fetched him.” 
Horatio shook his head. 

“No, none of those things. I handed in my 
card to the office-boy, and when Mr. Davis sent 
for me I asked him to tell me wliat he wanted 
to accomplish. When he had explained his 
needs I showed him as well as I could just how 
our Futurist System would help him. I told 
him about our experience with it in the Darby- 
ville Cotton Mills. And I named him the price, 
and he gave me the order . 9 9 

1 ‘ B-b-but, ’ ’ stammered Zing excitedly, ‘ ‘ what 
did you do to get his attention? Novelty they 
want — always novelty. ’ ’ 

Horatio considered the matter. 

“Well,” he hesitated, “I — I tried to behave 
in a manner becoming a gentleman. Perhaps 
that was novelty enough. ’ ’ 

“Lordy!” groaned the Boss of the Live 
Wire Stationery Company, “I never thought of 
that scheme ! ’ 9 

“How do you do it?” questioned Mr. Woo- 
dle, interestedly. 


A Question of Ethics 

S AMUEL HODGE, Tennytown agent of the 
Rapatype Typewriter Company, looked at 
his watch again — and swore. He was 
not exactly angry; but very, very impatient. 
“Confound Jerry Lane!” he said, in effect. 
The train which the agent must take would 
leave in half an hour ; he desired greatly to hold 
speech with his assistant, and the assistant 
had not yet arrived at the office. On Samuel 
Hodge’s thin, nervous face elation and exas- 
peration were strangely mingled. Again he 
looked at his watch. Again he swore. 

True, it was barely eight o ’clock, Lane seldom 
arrived before eight-thirty, and he had no means 
of knowing that his employer wished specially 
to see him on this particular morning. Never- 
theless, Mr. Hodge felt both disappointed and 
aggrieved that he was not there. Which will 
give a fair index to the sweet reasonableness of 
Mr. Samuel Hodge’s nature. 

He stepped to the door of the private office, 
whose floor he had been pacing, and spoke to 
little Miss Perkins, the stenographer. 

( 53 ) 


54 


TEE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 



Again lie looked at his watch. Again he swore. 


A QUESTION OF ETHICS. 


55 


“ Can’t wait any longer,” lie snapped. 
“When Lane comes, tell him I’ve been called to 
the factory. He ought to have been here before 
this. There was something I wanted to tell him 
before I left; but it will have to wait. He’ll 
hear from me, all right.’ , Mr. Hodge twisted 
his thin face into a smile which, to the appre- 
hensive little stenographer, looked very grim 
and menacing. 

“You can break the news to him yourself,” 
he swept on impulsively. “Tell him that I’ve 
been watching his work, and I think he’s about 
through as my assistant. I’ve pretty well come 
to a decision regarding his future with this com- 
pany. I’m not going to be the loser by his mis- 
takes any longer. That Grossberg order will 
be placed to-day, and I know Grossberg prefers 
our machine. Tell Lane that if he fails to land 
that order — well, it’ll cost him something per- 
sonally. He won’t draw salary from me after 
this week. ’ ’ 

He looked quizzically at the girl, whose own 
face was a study in mixed emotions. ‘ ‘ Got that 
straight?” he barked. 


< ‘ I think so, Mr. Hodge. ’ ’ 


56 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 


The agent looked at her doubtfully, an 
expression almost of regret on his sallow, irrita- 
ble countenance. He seemed about to speak fur- 
ther ; but instead he glanced again at his watch. 
“ Great fishhooks V 9 he gasped. “I’ve got to 
hustle V 9 Jerking his grip from the floor he 
rushed out of the office. 

As the door slammed behind his retreating 
back, Miss Mildred Perkins puckered her pretty 
lips in a boyish whistle. 

“ There goes a man,” she commented dis- 
respectfully, ‘ 4 whose mother didn’t spank him 
enough when he was a baby.” She shook a 
diminutive fist in the direction her employer had 
taken. ‘ 4 The idea of his talking that way about 
Jerry Lane, the hardest-working and smartest 
salesman that we ever had here — and the 
nicest one, too,” she concluded with a slight 
flush. In the event of trouble between Mr. 
Hodge and his assistant, it was quite apparent 
where the stenographer’s sympathies would be. 

Jerry Lane, a tall, raw-boned young giant, 
whose freckled, homely face was redeemed by 
blue eyes of a peculiarly honest expression, 
entered the office in time to surprise her in the 
belligerent pose. 


A QUESTION OF ETHICS. 


57 


“Call off the dogs of war,” lie grinned. 
“There ain’t a-going to be any battle. What’s 
troubling the light of the office?” 

“If you mean me,” she flashed back at him, 
“my troubles are few. But yours are just 



He should have tallced to me personally.” 


beginning. Mr. Hodge has gone to the factory 
and left you in full charge while he is away.” 

Jerry’s grin widened. “I shouldn’t call that 
an unmixed evil,” he observed. 

“Maybe not. But the Grossberg order that 
Mr. Hodge lias been working on is due to be 


58 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 


placed to-day, and if you don’t get it you’ll be 
tired at the end of the week. Mr. Hodge told me 
to tell you so.” 

The grin faded. “ Hodge oughtn’t to have 
done that,” he said soberly. “He should have 
talked to me personally. I — I thought he was 
pleased with my work. Just what did he say?” 

She told him with circumstance and detail, 
her black eyes snapping with indignation. She 
was disappointed at her failure to kindle an 
answering flame in her auditor. Jerry Lane’s 
boyish face was very grave ; but he looked more 
hurt than angry. 

“Doesn’t it make you — mad?” she con- 
cluded. 

With an effort he managed a smile. “Can’t 
say that I enjoy it. I’ll probably get the Gross- 
berg order — no reason why I shouldn’t — but 
talk like that doesn’t help a salesman any. 
Hodge has always been pretty white with me. 
He taught me what I know about the business, 
and I thought — let’s not talk about it. Hello! 
Here’s the postman.” 

The mail was large, even for a Monday 
morning, and by the time it had been read and 
disposed of Miss Perkins had filled many a page 


A QUESTION OF ETHICS. 


59 


of her notebook and the morning was well 
advanced. A personal letter which had been 
delivered with the office mail Lane tossed aside 
unopened, noting as he did so that the envelope 
bore in the upper left-hand corner the name of 
the Cutter Typewriter Company. 

“That important document can wait until I 
get back from Grossberg’s, ’ ’ he commented. ‘ 1 1 
don’t want to read about the merits of another 
machine before going out to sell Bapatypes.” 

“A circular!” questioned the stenographer. 

“Sure. They’re flooding the mails with 
them, I understand. A good machine, too; 
though, of course, not in a class with the Bapa- 
type. They list at a hundred dollars, hut I’ve 
heard that they practically let the customer fix 
the actual selling price.” 

“A salesman for a house like that would 
have an easy time,” she commented. 

“He certainly would. Well, I’m now going 
forth to beard the Grossberg in his lair, so” — 
he hesitated with his hand on the door — “wish 
me luck. ’ ’ 

The answer was a smile of such electrifying 
quality that Lane swung along Main street 
toward Grossberg’s Paris Store, feeling fit to 


60 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 


conquer the world. The mood was still on him 
when he presented his card to the office boy, nor 
had it left him when, about half an hour later, 
he was ushered into the presence of Mr. Abra- 
ham Grossberg himself. 

Except in such branches as required an 
expert’s knowledge, the proprietor of the Paris 
Store gave personal attention to all purchases, 
which was perhaps one reason why lie was rated 
as a millionaire. He greeted the salesman 
cordially. 

“You came about dose typewriters. Yes?” 

Lane produced his order book. “Fourteen 
wasn’t it, Mr. Grossberg?” 

4 ‘ Hot iss right. ’ ’ The buyer looked shrewdly 
at the younger man. ‘ 6 Fourteen machines iss a 
big order. Yat discoundt do I get?” 

Lane knew perfectly well that Hodge had 
quoted the one and only price which the factory 
would authorize. He also knew that all other 
machines of similar class were sold at the same 
price. He was no longer a green salesman 
whom a dickering buyer could confuse. He 
smiled confidently. 

“The list price is one hundred dollars. On 
an order of ten or more machines we allow a 


A QUESTION OF ETHICS. 


61 


discount of ten per cent. That would make 
them ninety dollars each, net, to you. ’ ’ 

Grossberg shook his head. “Not goot 
enough, ’ ’ he said. 



“ Vat discoundt do I get ? 


Jerry’s confidence abated not one whit. 
“It’s the best we can do. You can’t con- 
sider first cost alone when you buy a typewriter. 
The important question is which machine will 
enable your stenographers to turn out the high- 
est quality and greatest quantity of work over 


62 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 


the longest period of time. You’ve had our 
machine in here on trial, and you know what 
class of work it does. As for durability, if you 
want me to compare it with the other standard 
machines, I will ” 

The buyer raised his hand. ‘‘It iss not 
necessary. I haf already gomparisons made. I 
had aboudt decided to gif your gompany the 
order. But to-day comes this letter” — he 
picked up a typewritten sheet which Jerry’s 
quick eye could see bore the name of the Cutter 
Typewriter Company — ‘ ‘ offering me machines 
at sixty dollars each. My brother in Milwaukee 
uses dose machines. He says they are goot — 
not so goot as yours, maybe ; but goot enough. ” 

“I never knock a competitor,” said Lane 
easily, “but those people themselves would tell 
you that they don’t any more compete with us 
than — well, than a Ford does with a Packard.” 

“Many a man drives a Ford who would in 
a Packard be riding if the price vas the same, ’ ’ 
retorted Mr. Grossberg. “Dot iss gompetition. 
But I say no more.” 

And despite the most convincing sales argu- 
ment that Lane had ever put forth, no more 
could he induce the thrifty buyer to say. At 


A QUESTION OF ETHICS. 


63 


the end of half an hour Jerry realized that this 
was not merely an attempt to trick him into a 
concession ; but he did not finally abandon hope 
until the impatient Grossberg called in a stenog- 
rapher and then and there dictated an order to 
the Cutter Typewriter Company. 

“The incident iss glosed, Mr. Lane,” he said 
significantly, as the girl went out. 1 ‘ I haf placed 
my order. Permit me, if you vill be so kind, to 
take up other business.” 

After that there was nothing to do but go, 
and Jerry went. He traversed the distance to 
his office in a state of mind approaching despair. 
He knew that Hodge had counted the order as 
already booked, and though it was certain that 
had the peppery agent himself been there the 
result would have been the same, it was equally 
certain that it would be impossible to convince 
him of that fact. 

It was not alone the impending loss of his 
position that troubled the young salesman. To 
get another equally good would not be particu- 
larly difficult. It was the sense of injustice that 
rankled. He had done his best and he knew that 
his best was good. The order was lost through 
no fault of his, hut because of circumstances 


64 


TEE SPIRIT OF SERVICE . 


entirely beyond his control. No salesman living 
could have made Abraham Grossberg forget the 
difference of thirty dollars in the price of the 
two machines. Yet because he had not accom- 
plished the impossible he was to be thrown out 
at the end of the week with as little ceremony as 
if he had been detected in dishonesty or in some 
bone-headed blunder. For the first time in his 
good-natured life, Jerry Lane was thoroughly 
angry. 

Little Miss Perkins looked up as he entered 
the office, noted the stormclouds on his face, and 
was wisely silent. She was reasonably certain 
he would tell her the story, and she was content 
to wait. He did not keep her waiting long. 

‘ 4 1 guess I might as well begin packing, ’ ’ he 
volunteered after a few minutes, during which 
he had been making a futile effort to concen- 
trate on the letters which awaited his signature. 

“You lost the order V’ she questioned, al- 
though the fact was written plainly on his face. 

“Lost it? No. It was stolen out of my 
pocket. That infernal Cutter Typewriter Com- 
pany sneaked it away with their thieving price. ’ ■ 

And he told her all about it. 


A QUESTION OF ETHICS. 


65 


“It’s something that I couldn’t possibly pre- 
vent,” he concluded, “but Hodge will never see 
it that way. He’ll believe that if he had been on 
the job he could have made Grossberg see that 
the Eapatype is better worth ninety dollars than 
the Cutter is sixty. There’s no false modesty 
about Samuel Hodge. 

‘ ‘ Even if he could have landed that order — 
and he couldn’t — there’s other business coming 
up that he’d be sure to lose. The Pettibone 
Company is in the market this week for twenty 
machines, and I’ll get the order sure as fate. 
Pettibone doesn’t like Hodge and will not do 
business with him. He told me so, straight out. 
But since I was lucky enough to pull little 
Jennie Pettibone out of the river a couple of 
months ago I’ve stood ace-high with the old 
man. I could sell him any machine on the mar- 
ket. But Hodge won’t believe that. He’ll think 
the order would have come in anyhow. If I 
were a wise man I’d get Pettibone to hold off 
for another week, and save that order to start 
my next job on.” 

“I should think you’d do that. I know 7 
would.” 


66 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 


4 4 Would you?” Jerry looked eagerly at the 
pretty girl, whose interest in his fortunes was 



He picked up the letter from the Cutter Typewriter Company. 


becoming increasingly apparent. 4 4 You think 
that would be a square thing to do ? ” 

4 4 Do you think Mr. Hodge is treating you 
squarely?” 


A QUESTION OF ETHICS. 


67 


“Hum! No, I don’t; but — that isn’t ex- 
actly the question.” He had picked up the 
letter from the Cutter Typewriter Company, 
which lay on his desk where he had left it when 
he went to call on Grossberg. Now he ripped it 
open. Miss Perkins was startled at the expres- 
sion on his face as he read. When he had 
finished, he passed the letter over to her without 
a word. 

The letter read as follows : 

CUTTER TYPEWRITER COMPANY, 

Cleveland, Ohio, July 3, 1014. 

Mr. J. Lane , Care Eapatype Typewriter Co., 

Tenneytown, Illinois : 

Dear Sir, — Your name has been given us by Mr. Amos 
Pettibone, of your city, as that of an ambitious young man of 
the type we like to have represent us. While Mr. Pettibone 
has no interest in this company, we have had considerable 
business dealings with him and esteem his judgment highly. 
He feels certain that your present connection and associations 
are unpleasant, and that you would welcome an opportunity to 
change. 

Our proposal, briefly, is this: We have no agent at Tenney- 
town. We want one immediately. Some important business 
will be placed in that territory in the near future, and we 
want a man on the ground. We will appoint you our exclusive 
agent, crediting you with commissions on all orders received 
from Tenneytown, whether sent in by you or mailed direct by 
the customer. The machines will be charged to you at the 
agents’ price of $50.00 each, and your commission will be the 
difference between that and the sales price. The list price of 


68 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 


the Cutter is $100.00. From this you are at liberty to make 
such discounts as you deem necessary to secure business. 

We trust you will accept our offer, but in any case we must 
ask for your immediate decision. If we receive a telegraphic 
acceptance before close of business on Monday, the 6th, we 
will credit you with all orders received on or after that date. 

Should we fail to hear from you, which we sincerely hope 
will not be the case, we shall at once open negotiations else- 
where. Very truly yours, 

Cutter Typewriter Company. 

Mildred Perkins laid the letter on the desk 
and clapped her hands. Then she opened her 
notebook and poised her pencil. 

“Pm waiting/ ’ she said significantly. 

“Waiting for what! ” 

‘ ‘ For that telegram of acceptance, first, and 
then your letter of resignation to the Rapatype 
Typewriter Company. And I’m going to send 
mine along with it, in the same mail. We’ll 
leave Mr. Samuel Hodge flat on his back!” 

Lane looked at her in surprise. Her tone 
was as nearly vicious as it was possible for so 
naturally sweet a voice to be. Like most of her 
sex, Miss Mildred Perkins was an ardent par- 
tisan, and she had wholeheartedly espoused 
Lane’s cause. With Hodge she had no personal 
quarrel; but he had been unfair to Jerry, and 
that was enough for her. 


A QUESTION OF ETHICS . 


09 


“You’d quit — like that?” lie questioned. 

“I certainly would. I thought” — she hesi- 
tated a moment, then went bravely on — “I 
thought you might be needing a stenographer in 
your new office. ’ ’ 

Lane ran his fingers through his curly brown 
hair. The situation was developing angles that 
robbed it of its simplicity. 

“I hardly know what to say. Of course I’d 
rather have you with me than any one else I 
know of; but it doesn’t seem right, somehow, 
for you to leave Hodge this way.” 

“It’s just as right for me as it is for you,” 
she said stubbornly. 

“Maybe it is,” said the salesman thought- 
fully. He walked slowly toward the private 
office. 

“I’m still waiting for that telegram,” the 
girl reminded him. 

“I guess I won’t send that telegram — just 
yet,” he said. And he went into the private 
office and shut the door. 

When noon came he had not reappeared, and 
Miss Perkins covered her typewriter and went 
down to the cafeteria without disturbing him. 


70 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 


When she returned she found him sitting at her 
machine, pounding out a letter. 

“Pm writing to the Cutter Company,” he 
explained cheerfully, “telling them that I shall 
be glad to represent them — in some other terri- 
tory. ’ ’ 

She did not attempt to conceal her dismay. 

“If you took the agency in Tennytown, that 
Grossberg order would be credited to you, you 
could take the Pettibone order ” 

“Yes, and a whole lot of other orders. With 
what I know of the situation here I could make 
a pot of money in the next few months. But 
where did I get that information?” 

“From Mr. Hodge, I suppose.” 

“Exactly. Hodge took me as a green boy, 
taught me the business, paid me a salary when 
I couldn’t have been worth anything to him, 
and eventually made a pretty fair salesman of 
me. He can fire me if he likes when he gets 
back ; and if he does I’ll not pretend that I think 
lie’s treating me squarely. But I’m going to 
keep clean, myself. He trusted me to stay here 
on the job until he got back, and I’m going 
to do it.” 


A QUESTION OF ETHICS. 


71 


“The Grossberg and Pettibone orders alone 
would be worth more than three hundred dollars 
to you,” she commented. “Business ethics 
come rather high, don’t they?” 

“They come high,” he agreed, “but we’ve 
got to have them if we want to retain our self- 
respect.” He drew a long breath, and smiled 
for the first time in several hours. “I’m glad 
that’s over,” he said. “I’m just beginning to 
realize how near I was to being a crook. ’ ’ 

Miss Perkins looked at him admiringly. 

“I like that quality in you,” she said. “It 
seems to me you draw the line altogether too 
closely; but that’s much better than trying to 
deceive yourself into thinking a thing’s right 
just because it’s to your personal advantage.” 

‘ ‘ However that may be, ’ ’ grinned the other, 
“it’s time for me to get back to work. If this is 
my last week here, I’m going to make it a record 
for sales.” 

And he went out of the office in search of 
orders with a determination which was almost 
as compelling as his customary enthusiasm. 

When he returned, shortly before the closing 
hour, the little stenographer handed him a tele- 
gram. “It is addressed to you personally, so 


72 


THE SPIRIT OF SER VICE . 


I didn ’t open it, ’ ’ she explained. ‘ i Probably the 
Cutter people are wiring to know why they 
don’t hear from you.” 

“We’ll soon see,” said Jerry, ripping open 
the envelope and laying the message on the desk 
before her. He leaned over her shoulder and 
they read it together. And this is what they 
read : 

Jerry Lane, Agent, Tenneytown, Illinois: 

I fooled you that time, but can’t keep joke longer. Presi- 
dent called me on long-distance this morning and appointed me 
general sales agent, headquarters at factory. You can have 
the Tenneytown office. You are fired as assistant — see? If 
you lose Grossberg order you lose commissions — see? Tell 
Miss Perkins to smoke up. I had her goat. Congratulations, 

old boy. Samuel Hodge, General Sales Agent. 

“I’d rather have the Rapatype agency,” 
exulted Jerry, “than ten agencies like the Cutter 
Company. They will be good for six months or 
a year, until people begin to find out that the 
machines will not stand up. After that, I’ll 
replace every one of them with Rapatypes ! ’ ’ 

“Your ethics certainly didn’t cost you any- 
thing this lime,” agreed the delighted Miss 
Perkins. 


The Inside Game 


S O that’s all there is to being a salesman!” 
commented Fred Grayson, doubtfully, as 
he followed the burly figure of the assis- 
tant sales manager into the office of the Prime 
Adding Machine Company. 

“Not quite; hut it’s ninety per cent of it,” 
said the older man. ‘ ‘ Get the machines in. Do 
it by interesting the bookkeeper, by jollying the 
purchasing agent, by talking golf with the pro- 
prietor, or any other way that occurs to you; 
but get ’em in! Then stay away for a month 
or two unless you are sent for. The machine is 
a better salesman than you can ever hope to be. 
After you get it in an office, if the machine is 
needed it will sell itself. If it isn’t needed you 
could hardly give it away. ’ ’ 

“But, Mr. Blair,” protested Grayson, “look- 
ing at it that way, an adding-machine salesman 
is little more than a sort of messenger hoy.” 

“A well-paid messenger boy, my son,” the 
other assured him, indicating with a wave of his 
plump hand the blackboard on which the results 

( 73 ) 


74 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 



Get the machines in.” 


of the previous month’s sales campaign were 
recorded. “You know the system we work on 
here. In our prize contests each salesman is 


THE INSIDE GAME. 


75 


credited with one point for each twenty-five dol- 
lars. Thus, a three hundred dollar machine 
would call for a credit of twelve points for the 
man who made the sale. How many points do 
you see under Bryce’s name?” 

Grayson studied the board. 

“One hundred and twenty-four,” he an- 
nounced after a moment of silent calculation. 

“Multiply that by twenty-five and you will 
see that Bryce’s sales for the month amounted 
to thirty-one hundred dollars. The commission, 
as you know, is fifteen per cent. That means 
that for one month’s work Billy Bryce pulls 
down over four hundred and fifty cold, hard 
simoleons; and you’ll see that Harley and 
Simpson are not so very far behind him, either. 
Those three hustlers pick up their four or five 
thousand a year, right along ; and they do it in 
just the way I’ve been telling you. Now, if you 
think you can figure out any better way to sell 
machines you are welcome to try it; but I’d 
advise you to follow the crowd.” 

This was Grayson’s first day in the employ 
of the Prime Adding Machine Company. He 
had started out that morning, in the care of the 
experienced Bryce, to learn by observation just 


76 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 


Low adding machines should be sold. The 
methods employed had been so different from 
his dreams that on his return he had sought 
further instruction from Blair, whose rise to a 
semi-official position had been preceded by a 
spectacular career of salesmanship. 

A year before, when Grayson had entered 
the employ of the Millville Bank, as bookkeeper, 
he had found a Prime adding machine already 
installed. The machine had fascinated him, and 
as he became familiar with its mechanism and 
learned what an invaluable assistant it was to 
the man who dealt with figures, there had grown 
in him a conviction that he should be a sales- 
man. Here was a work to which he could give 
himself with an enthusiasm that bookkeeping 
had never claimed. 

The selling methods he had worked out 
seemed so obvious that it had never occurred to 
him to doubt that they were in universal use. 
He had supposed that before trying to place a 
machine a salesman would first make a thorough 
study of the prospective customer’s business 
routine, see where machines could do the work 
better than human beings, and know enough 
about machines to be able to apply them so that 


THE INSIDE GAME. 


77 , 

no friction would occur. Then he could make 
his sales argument with the knowledge that if 
his customer would listen to logic the sale was 
as good as made. 

When the vacancy in the sales force of the 
adding machine company had finally occurred, 
Grayson had abandoned his ledger with a feel- 
ing that he was to become one of a wise and 
earnest band of missionaries, intent on teaching 
the business world a new and higher standard of 
efficiency. The experiences of the first day had 
dissipated this belief, without impairing his 
confidence in his own plans. 

4 4 Those fellows make me think of a crowd of 
bush-league ball players,” he confided to his 
wife that evening in the privacy of their cozy 
apartment. 4 4 They’ve a good deal of natural 
ability, but they never use their heads. So long 
as the only competition they have is of the same 
variety, they get along fine; but put ’em up 
against a team of cripples that know how to 
play the real, inside game, and the cripples 
would slaughter ’em. ’ ’ 

4 4 How do you think machines should be 
sold?” asked the pretty little woman, as she 
poured for her husband a second cup of coffee. 


78 


TEE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 


She was not particularly interested in business, 
but she enjoyed Grayson’s monologues, regard- 
less of their subject ; and during their married 
life he had threshed out many a knotty problem 
under the spur of her skilful questioning. 

“At least this much is sure. I don’t care 
what Blair or Bryce or any one else says, I know 
that the jollying, good-fellow, slap-Bill-on-tlie- 
back method is not the best way to sell anything 
so expensive, so intricate and so really useful as 
an adding machine. The salesman ought to be 
an expert, capable of visualizing a concern’s 
entire system and pointing out where his ma- 
chines will save time and clerk-hire. Why, right 
now, I know more about the mechanism we have 
to work with than Bryce does, and before I get 
through I’m going to be able to take it apart 
and put it together again in the dark. ’ ’ 

“What sort of a territory did they give 
you?” 

“Just fair. There are four office buildings, 
each of which contain five hundred or more 
offices ; but most of the concerns are too small 
to be any good to me. There is one plum, 
though, if it could be shaken off the tree. If 
there ever was an outfit that needed adding 


TEE INSIDE GAME. 


79 


machines, it is the Millville Light & Power Com- 
pany. If they used them at all they would need 
from ten to fifty. But Mr. Blair said that no 
one had ever been able to get them interested. 
He told me not to waste time on them.” 



Mrs. Grayson leaned forward, an alert 
expression on her piquant face. 

“Fred,” she queried, “how much commis- 
sion would you make on fifty machines?” 

“Say that they averaged four hundred dol- 
lars each, a sale of fifty would be worth about 
three thousand dollars to me. But you’d better 



80 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 


not spend that money just yet. I’m not likely to 
make the sale.” 

“I don’t see why not,” she objected. “It 
seems to me that here is a fine chance for you 
to try out your theories. Maybe the reason the 
other men couldn’t interest the power company 
was that they didn’t ‘play the inside game,’ as 
you call it. Why don ’t you try ? ” 

Fred Grayson’s right fist smote his left palm 
in the fighting gesture that his wife loved. 

“I’ll do it!” he exclaimed. “I’ll see the 
chief accountant to-morrow. ’ ’ 

Seeing the chief accountant of the power 
company entailed no especial difficulties. Bra- 
den, who held that office, was quite willing to be 
interviewed; but on the subject of adding 
machines his ideas were positive. 

“They’re good,” he admitted, “but they’re 
no good to me. Look at what we have to do.” 
He displayed one of the company’s electric- 
light bills for Grayson’s consideration. 

“All those blank spaces have to be filled in, 
and if your machine will not do the whole thing 
it is cheaper to do it all by hand than to make 
two jobs of it. 


THE INSIDE GAME . 


81 


4 ‘First, there is the date on which the last 
meter reading was taken, and the date of the 
present reading. Then there is the reading of 



They’re good , hut they’re no good to me.” 


the meter itself which shows the number of 
kilowatt hours to be paid for. Then there is the 
gross amount of the bill in dollars and cents. 
Then comes the discount, and finally the net 
amount of the bill. This stub must also be 


82 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 


filled out with the name of the customer and the 
gross, discount and net amount of the bill. We 
let them put one of your machines in here on 
trial a year or so ago; but it wasn’t of any use 
to us — not for the purpose we would want it 
for.” 

Grayson was studying the bill, trying to 
adjust it to his mental conception of the machine 
he was attempting to sell. 

“I don’t see any insurmountable difficulties 
here,” he said at length. “It’s no cinch, and 
our stock machine will not do it. But I don’t 
see why we can’t build a special machine that 
will give you exactly the service you require.” 

“It’s up to you,” said the accountant. “I 
don’t believe you can do it; but if you can and 
will hold the price within reason I’ll put through 
a requisition on the purchasing department for 
ten machines at once, and we can probably use 
several times that many. ’ ’ 

When Grayson left the office of the Millville 
Light & Power Company, he carried with him a 
supply of that company’s blank forms and a 
thorough knowledge of its rather intricate sys- 
tem. He traversed the distance to the adding- 
machine company in a whirlwind of enthusiasm, 


THE INSIDE GAME. 


83 


and burst into the private office of the cor- 
pulent and phlegmatic Blair with the air of a 
conqueror. 

Half an hour later his hopes were dust. 

“Forget it, Grayson,’ ’ the assistant sales 
manager had concluded. “Why should we dis- 
rupt our organization, go to the expense of 
special machinery, pay high-priced designers, 
for the sake of selling a few machines of that 
type? I told you not to bother with the power 
company. If they want to use our stock ma- 
chine, well and good. If they don’t you’ll find 
plenty of other concerns that will. They do not 
change their entire system to suit the whims of 
every new customer. Why should they expect 
us to?” 

‘ ‘ They don ’t, ’ ’ said Grayson wearily. ‘ ‘ But 
that’s no reason why we shouldn’t surprise 
them, if we can make money by doing it. How- 
ever, I suppose there is no use talking about it. ’ ’ 

“Not a bit in the world,” agreed Blair. 
* 1 Make your rounds, get your stock machines in 
on trial, go around a month or so later and 
pick up your orders. You’ll make money fast 
enough that way without trying to hog it all at 

9 9 


once. 


84 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 


At the dinner-table that evening Grayson 
was silent. To his wife’s tentative conversa- 
tional offers he replied in monosyllables until 
she, with the wisdom of seven married years, 
desisted from further effort and waited pa- 
tiently for the dumb devils to release their spell. 

“Minnie,” he said at last, when he had 
finished his coffee and his old briar pipe was 
glowing, “I’ve quit my fine new job.” 

“All right, Fred,” she agreed cheerfully. 
“You’ll get another one twice as fine.” 

“Furthermore,” he continued, “I’m going 
on a journey. If you’ll pack my bag I think I’ll 
catch the midnight train for Pittsburgh, where 
they make those miserable machines I thought I 
was going to sell. I’m willing to spend a few 
dollars in finding out if the management is as 
dead to the world as Blair thinks it is. ’ ’ 

The next morning he followed his card into 
the private office of Horace Prime, the mechan- 
ical genius and chief stockholder of the company 
which bore his name. 

“Of course we want the business,” said 
Prime, after Grayson had laid the situation 
before him. The trouble with those boys down 
in Millville, as well as in the other offices 


THE INSIDE GAME. 


85 


throughout the country, is that they get into a 
rut. Sometimes I think we should cut down 
commissions so as to give them more of an 
incentive to work.” 

“And you can build the machine f” ques- 
tioned Grayson. 

“Why, yes. Our stock machine, as you 
know, is a nine-bank affair, which prints up to 
9,999,999.99. That isn’t big enough for this job. 
It seems to me that about a fifteen-hank 
machine, split for numbers and amounts, ought 
to do the trick. I can see where we can alter 
our regular mechanism so that it will print the 
gross, discount and net figures, not only on the 
bill but also on the stub, without effort or 
thought on the part of the operator. Here, I’ll 
show you. ’ ’ 

He seized a sheet of drawing-paper and 
sketched rapidly. Grayson also drew a pencil 
from his pocket and began a design, which had 
assumed definite shape by the time Prime had 
completed his illustration. 

“You see,” said the inventor, “with this 
design the operator can split the machine at any 
point. He can either add two or more columns 
or simply add certain columns and print others 


86 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE . 


without adding. We’ll have to speed up the 
carriage a bit, too; but I can do that easily 
enough. What’s that drawing you are work- 
ing on?” 



“That’s just a little device I thought of 
while I was talking to the power company’s 
accountant,” said Grayson, passing the sheet 
over for the other’s inspection. “It’s simply a 
roll of paper which automatically comes into 


THE INSIDE GAME. 


87 


position at the proper time to get the number 
and amount of each bill. I’m no mechanic, as 
you can plainly see ; but the idea is that when 
the operator has finished billing for the day he 
will have in his machine the total amount of all 
the bills he has made out. Do you think it is 
practical !” 

Horace Prime studied the crude drawing 
intently for a few minutes. Then he pushed a 
button on his desk which summoned the chief 
designer. 

“Take this, Fritz,” he said to the stocky, 
middle-aged German who appeared at the door, 
“and see what you can make of it. I’ll go over 
it with you in detail when you have knocked it 
into shape. First, though, I want you to meet 
Mr. Grayson, the new manager of the Millville 
branch office. He ’ll take charge over Blair, who 
has been filling the position temporarily, since 
Parker’s death. Grayson, this is Fritz Breit- 
mann, who builds machinery in about the same 
unconventional way that you want to sell it. 
You two anarchists ought to get along.” 

“But, Mr. Prime!” gasped the wide-eyed 
Grayson, “I’ve had no experience. I never sold 
an adding machine in my life, and I’ve worked 


88 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 


for your company less than a week. The sales 
force at Millville will be wild !” 

The white-haired inventor looked at him 
quizzically. 

‘ ‘ My hoy, ’ ’ he chuckled, ‘ ‘ from the lingo you 
were using when you told me about this power 
company fiasco, I judge you know something 
about baseball. Now, I want to ask you a ques- 
tion : How long was it after Ty Cobb broke into 
the big game before he was leading his league f ’ ’ 

“Not long,” Grayson admitted. 

“And some of the old-time, mechanical ball 
players never did learn to like him very well, 
either. But that never bothered Tyrus much 
when lie was tearing down the base-lines, or 
stealing home with the winning run on a play 
that the slower-witted ones wouldn’t have 
thought possible. Experience is the easiest 
thing in the world to get, and initiative about 
the rarest — and the most unpopular with those 
who aren’t drawing dividends from it.” 

Grayson grinned and squared his shoulders. 

“There’ll be mistakes, no doubt, and big 
ones,” he said, with a rueful thought of the 
problems which lay before him, “but at least 
I ’ll keep trying. ’ ’ 


TEE INSIDE GAME. 


89 


“ Mistakes are a sign of life, and the man 
who doesn’t make them usually makes no suc- 
cesses, either. Go back to Millville and stir that 
moribund organization into hating you, if neces- 
sary; but get results. I expect to see your 
branch office at the top of its class by the end of 
the year. ’ 9 

And, despite the gloomy predictions of Blair, 
Bryce and some of the other salesmen, and the 
secret misgivings of Grayson himself, that is 
exactly what happened. 


The Intensive Idea 


B OB HABDY felt like the returning prodi- 
gal as he left the last of the village street 
lamps behind him and trudged along the 
snow-covered country road which led toward his 
uncle’s home. The crisp crunch of the hard- 
packed snow under his feet gave him a homely 
thrill, and the gleam of the white fields under 
the star-shine was restful to eyes which were 
weaiy of the glitter and glare and rush and 
slush of the city streets. Bob wished that he 
were indeed the returning prodigal, and he 
would have waived any claim on the fatted calf 
for the comfortable, problem-solving assurance 
that this was a home-coming for good. 

Yet he had chafed against the limitations 
and monotony of country life. It had seemed to 
him one unending round of tiresome tasks, 
ruinous to the hands and cramping to the spirit. 
There was not a day since his father’s death 
had cut short his college career and reduced him 
to the immediate necessity of earning his living 
that he had not rebelled against the circum- 

( 90 ) 


THE INTENSIVE IDEA 


91 



92 


TEE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 


stances which had made him practically a 
laborer on his uncle’s little farm. For three 
years the farm had claimed him. Untrained as 
he was, he had followed the line of least resis- 
tance, disdaining the meager opportunities that 
the near-by village afforded, and mentally exag- 
gerating the difficulty of finding employment in 
the flourishing city of Millville, thirty miles 
away. 

When a letter from an old schoolmate had 
brought the chance to try fortune as a cub sales- 
man in the big stationery and office-equipment 
establishment which the other’s father con- 
trolled, it had seemed to Bob Hardy that the 
door to Opportunity was swinging wide. Now, 
after a month of disheartening effort, he was 
coming back to his uncle’s home to spend the 
first day of the new year. As Bob’s sinewy, 
work-hardened legs carried him swiftly along 
the white path, he was debating seriously 
whether, after all, it would not be better to send 
in his resignation by mail and devote himself to 
the familiar round of farm labor. 

It had been a disappointment, that first 
month. After a week in the store, during which 
time he was supposed to familiarize himself 


TIIE INTENSIVE IDEA. 



' Get results. That’s all I care about . 1 


with the various lines of merchandise he was to 
sell, he had been sent out in a certain pre- 
scribed territory to solicit orders. And orders 


94 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE . 


had been few ; so few, in fact, that each day he 
had returned to the store with dragging step 
and a heavy sense of incompetence. 

Frank Williams, the friend to whom Bob 
would have turned for sympathy and counsel, 
was hundreds of miles away, completing a 
course in an eastern law-school, and Jacob 
Williams, the proprietor of the store, had not 
shown any pronounced disposition to be helpful. 

4 4 You have the goods, the prices, and a list 
of customers,’ ’ he had said in response to young 
Hardy’s inquiry as to sales methods. 4 4 What 
more do you want? Get results. That’s all I 
care about. ’ ’ 

After this rebuff Bob had turned away with 
most of his questions unasked, and he had gone 
about his unaccustomed duties in a spirit of pro- 
test and dissatisfaction. At least he had been 
energetic. He had trudged faithfully from office 
to office, day after day; and if his wares had not 
sold it was not because of his failure to offer 
them. Bob hugged this comforting thought to 
his bosom as he turned into the long lane which 
led to the home of his uncle, Jonas Hardy. 

A flood of light from the opening door, and a 
cheery hail of 4 4 Here’s the boy!” cut short his 


THE INTENSIVE IDEA . 


95 


gloomy mnsings. A moment later he was in his 
aunt’s embrace, his right hand was tingling 
from his uncle’s grip, and his blue devils were 
flying from the warmth of that welcome. Then 
came a supper that tasted most uncommonly 
good after a month of boarding-house fare; and 
by the time that was over and the two men were 
seated before the open fire, with Aunt Martha 
busy at her knitting in her favorite place beside 
the big lamp, Bob had been told the simple tale 
of events during his absence, all the gaps had 
been filled in, and it seemed incredible that he 
had been away at all. 

For a time uncle and nephew sat in silence, 
Jonas puffing at his big-bowled pipe and Bob 
staring into the fire. Gradually the boy’s trou- 
bles rose before him and a somber expression 
shaded his smooth young face. The older man 
watched him with sympathetic interest. 

“Sonny,” he said at length, “you look sort 
of down in the mouth. Ain’t things been going 
well with you?” 

Young Hardy shook his head gloomily. 

“Not very, ’ ’ he admitted. ‘ 1 I guess I wasn ’t 
cut out for a salesman; and anyhow I don’t get 
much of a chance. ’ ’ 



A moment later he was in his aunt’s embrace. 


TEE INTENSIVE IDEA. 


97 


“What seems to be the trouble ?” 

“Oh, they won’t give me any pointers at the 
office, for one thing; but they say I don’t need 
’em — that if I’m any good I’ll be better off to 
work out my own selling methods.” 

“Um-huh,” Jonas nodded understanding^, 
“I find that the hired man does better without 
too much bossing. If he gets the cows milked I 
don’t seem to care much whether he squeezes or 
strips.” 

“And then I haven’t got enough territory,” 
continued Bob. “If I had about four times as 
much, why maybe I’d make some money for the 
concern and for myself, too. As it is, I just 
can’t. I’ve been in every office on my list three 
times in the past three weeks, and I’m simply 
ashamed to call on them again without waiting 
for a month or so. Some of them acted as if 
I had worn out my welcome the last time I 
called.” 

Jonas Hardy puffed his pipe meditatively. 

“How many offices you got on your list?” 
he questioned. 

“Roughly, about six hundred,” said Bob, 
after a moment’s silent calculation. 


98 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 


‘ 1 Great Jehoshaphat ! And you ’ve seen each 
one three times in three weeks ? ’ ’ 

1 ‘ Well, you see,” Bob explained, “I’ve got 
two office buildings, the Grannis and the Man- 
ton, and there are about three hundred offices in 
each. The buildings are right opposite each 
other, so I don’t waste much time on the street.” 

“But even so,” protested his uncle, “if you 
worked ten hours a day you’d have to make ten 
calls an hour to see all those folks in a week, 
and of course you couldn’t average anything 
like that.” 

Young Hardy grinned in a rather patroniz- 
ing manner. 

“As a matter of fact, I often see twenty 
people in an hour, and sometimes thirty,” he 
boasted. “It doesn’t take but a minute. I just 
run in, hand my card to the most important- 
looking man I see, and say ‘I’m from the 
Williams Stationery and Office Equipment 
Company. Do you need anything in our line 
to-day?’ Usually he says he doesn’t, so I hustle 
out and into the next office. Of course when 
they do want something it takes longer; but I 
can generally get to see at least a hundred con- 


THE INTENSIVE IDEA. 


99 


cerns a day, and sometimes a good many more 
than that. ’ ’ 

Jonas Hardy turned in his chair and sur- 
veyed his nephew as if the latter were some 
strange and interesting species of animal. Then 
he began to laugh, and he laughed until the tears 
ran down his withered cheeks, while Bob looked 
on in wounded silence. 

‘ ‘ I don’t see where you find so much to laugh 
about,” he grumbled, when the paroxysms had 
ceased and his uncle sat up, wiping his eyes with 
his big handkerchief. 

“Forgive me, Sonny,” apologized the old 
man. “I didn’t mean to laugh at you; but 
what you were telling me made me think of some 
experiences of my own, when I was about your 
age, or a little older. I just had to laugh.” 

“Why, you never were a salesman, were 
you?” asked the younger man in a mollified 
tone. 

“For a good many years I’ve got the top of 
the market for most of my farm produce; but 
that isn ’t what I ’m talking about. ’ ’ Still chuck- 
ling, Jonas turned to his wife. 


100 


TEE SPIRIT OF SERVICE . 


“Martha,” he called, “what used I to say 
was the least acreage a farmer could make a 
good living from!” 

“A thousand acres, wasn’t it, Jonas?” 
smiled the placid, pink-cheeked old lady. 



“Sonny,” he said at length, “ You look sort of down in the 
mouth” 


“That’s right: a thousand acres. That was 
the mark I set. You see, I was one of the early 
ones to get this ‘back-to-the-land’ notion. It 
hit me nearly fifty years ago, when I came back 
from the war and found that most of the book- 


THE INTENSIVE IDEA . 


101 


keeping jobs were being held down by one- 
legged chaps, or fellows that hadn’t been strong 
enough to go to the front. 

“Well, I had a little money tucked away and 
land was cheap. It seemed to me that farming 
was the one thing that was open to me, and any- 
how I’d always wanted to have my own place 
and boss my own work. So I got a quarter- 
section with a house and barns on it, scratched 
the surface of the ground a little, put in a hun- 
dred acres of corn and sat back expecting my 
fortune to come to me. 

“It didn’t come very fast. That first year 
my net income was a shade less than a hundred 
dollars — not enough to pay interest on the 
money I had invested. I was sure the trouble 
was that I had not enough land; and as I didn’t 
have any more money I rented five hundred 
acres from Bill Parsons and put that into corn 
— all but a little patch right across the road 
from our house, which had been used as a feed 
lot. Your Aunt Martha got me to turn that 
over to her for her garden truck and chickens. 

4 4 The corn crop was a failure that year. The 
winter had been mild with little snow, so there 
wasn’t much moisture in the ground to begin 


102 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 


with. Then the April rains were light, and 
from the first of May until the middle of August 
we didn’t have even a real good sprinkle. 
Everything burned up — except that truck patch 
that your aunt was managing. 

“Not having any running water on the land, 
Parsons had put in a drive-well which must have 
led down to some underground river, and he had 
a windmill and a big tank and a trough where 
the cattle used to drink. Your aunt had bor- 
rowed the hired man for a few days and put in 
a couple of acres of garden truck and sweet 
corn; and to save that we installed the first 
irrigation system this part of the country ever 
saw. We criss-crossed that little patch with 
ditches, and we nursed and tended that bunch 
of green stuff as if our lives depended on it — 
as, indeed, they almost did. The farmers used 
to drive in ten miles to see our garden, and they 
seldom drove away without taking a few dollars 
worth of truck with them. Then one morning I 
started a little after midnight and drove the 
thirty miles into Millville with a wagonload of 
sweet corn and fresh vegetables; and you 
ought to have seen the markets fight for the 
stuff. I made regular trips after that. 


THE INTENSIVE IDEA . 


103 


‘ * Those two acres saved us from ruin. They 
gave us all we needed for our own use, they paid 
the rent on six hundred acres of unproductive 
land, and after covering all our expenses we still 
had a little balance to start the next year on. 
And, do you know, I kind of revised my notion 
of the amount of territory I needed to spread 
my energies over.” 

Jonas Hardy looked at his nephew quizzi- 
cally. “Do you see what Fin driving at, 
Sonny?” he queried. 

Bob shook his head. “Can’t say that I do. 
Of course I know you sold out the big place and 
bought this twenty-acre farm just outside the 
village, and I know you’ve done well with it. 
But I don’t see why my selling experiences 
should have made you think of it. ’ ’ 

“If you don’t see it, it’s a little hard to 
explain,” said the old man slowly, “but here’s 
the way the situation looks to me : 

“You have six hundred business possibili- 
ties — that’s your farm; and you’re working 
your farm the same way I started in to- work 
mine. You scratch the surface a little, drop a 
few seeds of perfunctory solicitation, and when 
a harvest doesn’t follow you clamor for more 


104 


TIIE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 


territory — just as I did until I learned my 
lesson.” 

“Yes, but wliat is the lesson?” persisted 
Bob, although the personal application was 
beginning to come home to him. 

“It is this: that in business or farming or 
any other line of human endeavor, a man gets 
back returns in proportion to the intelligent 
effort he puts forth. In this little twenty-acre 
farm of mine there is not a square yard that I 
am not personally acquainted with. I know its 
needs and possibilities as well as I know the 
needs and powers of my own body ; and I sup- 
ply those needs and develop those powers. The 
result is that my twenty acres give me bigger 
returns than many a man gets from a thousand 
acres. But those men are depending on the land 
alone, while I am depending on the land plus my 
own time and thought and effort. That’s what 
we call intensive farming, Sonny.” 

‘ 6 1 see, ’ 9 cried young Hardy excitedly. “You 
think that if instead of seeing how many con- 
cerns I could call on in a day I settled down to 
each one and got acquainted with its needs, and 
let the buyer know just what we have to offer, 
and why our ink is better, and how much 


THE INTENSIVE IDEA. 


105 


cheaper our carbon paper is, I’d make a lot 
more sales. Is that the idea?” 

“That’s the intensive idea, my boy,” agreed 
Jonas Hardy, “and it is the idea that wins all 
along the line. Suppose you try it. If it doesn’t 
work in the stationery business, come back to the 
farm. I’ll demonstrate to you that the common 
or garden cabbage-head is more responsive than 
the variety that does the buying of supplies in 
your Millville business offices. ’ ’ 

But Bob Hardy has never found it necessary 
to accept his uncle’s invitation. The soil of the 
field of business is rich, and since he has applied 
the intensive method to its cultivation the har- 
vest has been a bountiful one. 


Service 


HIS story might open in any of four 



offices. One would be the office of the 


Herricon Land Company, and the time 
would be the morning on which Miss Martha 
Davis discovered that her efficient right hand 
had ceased to deserve the adjective, that her 
fingers felt like rolls of cotton, and that each 
stroke on the keyboard of her typewriter pro- 
duced a dull ache in the region of her elbow. 

Another would be the office of the doctor 
(time, noon of the same day), where sentence 
was pronounced, to wit: “You must not at- 
tempt to operate a typewriter for at least a year, 
and it would be wiser if you never touched one 
again. ’ ’ 

Still another would be the 0. K. Job Print 
Shop, one week after the events above sug- 
gested, where and when John Graham, the pro- 
prietor, succumbed to the arguments of the 
ex-stenographer and agreed to allow her a com- 
mission on all orders for printing that she might 
secure. 


( 106 ) 


-SERVICE. 


107 



Her efficient right hand ceased to deserve the adjective. 


108 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 


The real action, however, begins in the outer 
office of the Sampson Iron and Steel Company 
on the occasion of the young saleswoman ’s third 
visit in search of orders. 

“Yep,” quoth the office-boy who had carried 
her card to his employer, “the Boss’ll see yuh. 
The printers fell down on our market letters 
again this week, so he ’s due to make a change. ’ ’ 

He opened the railing gate. 

4 ‘ And say, ’ ’ he continued, plaintively, 6 ‘ have 
a heart! If he gives yuh the job, don’t crowd 
the limit too hard on deliveries. It’s up to little 
muh to enclose ’em and get ’em to the P. 0. by 
live-thirty, and I ain’t built for speed. Anyhow, 
yuh won’t keep the job long if yuh make me miss 
the mails.” 

With this warning in her ears, Martha made 
her way into the private office where Mr. T. B. 
Sampson was waiting for her. He was lean, 
keen-faced, thin-lipped, and he radiated an 
atmosphere of alertness and efficiency. He 
wasted no time in preliminaries. 

“Morning,” he greeted her, “How are you 
folks fixed for getting work out in a big hurry!” 

“Best in the world,” asserted the girl. 


SERVICE. 109 



“ Yuli won’t keep the job long if yuh make me miss the mails ” 


He threw a printed folder on the desk before 
her. 

“How soon can you give me two thousand 
of those V’ 


110 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 


6 ‘ How soon do you want them ? ’ ’ 

“We send these out every Tuesday,” ex- 
plained the iron merchant. 4 ‘We have the copy 
in your hands not later than ten o’clock. We 
furnish the stock with front and back pages 
already printed. All you have to consider is 
the composition and press work on the two inside 
pages. To reach our out-of-town customers on 
the following morning the letters have to be in 
the postoffice by five-thirty, and to enable us to 
make the enclosures comfortably we must have 
the letters here not later than four o’clock. 

Martha studied the folder. At least, she pre- 
tended to study it. Knowing nothing of print- 
ing beyond the odd bits of information she had 
picked up during the brief period of her employ- 
ment by the 0. K. Job Print Shop, she resorted 
to the ancient expedient of looking as wise as 
possible and saying no more than was necessary. 

“We can give them to you,” she said at 
length. 

Sampson had been watching her intently. 

“How do you know you can!” he demanded. 

Martha was silent. 

“As a matter of fact you don’t know whether 
you can or not. But you do know that you have 


SERVICE. 


Ill 


to promise delivery in order to get the job, so 
you are willing to take a chance. Isn’t that 
true!” 

“I don’t know why you should assume any- 
thing of the sort,” she parried. 

“Isn’t it true!” 

“No, it isn’t true,” she defended herself. 
“I know we have the men and the machinery to 
turn out the work on time, so I am justified in 
saying that we can do it. If you’ll let me take 
this sample back to the shop I’ll find out 
whether we will undertake the job, and if we do 
undertake it, you’ll get your deliveries just 
when they are promised.” 

“That’s the way to talk,” Sampson ap- 
plauded her. “Now if you just perform as well 
as you promise we ought to get along nicely. 
My experience with printers, though, has made 
me a bit skeptical of their promises. As a class 
they seem to have no conception of the value of 
time. They’ll promise anything in order to get 
a job, and then they’ll stick the copy on a hook 
and forget about it until the customer raises a 
row. If just one printer would specialize on 
giving his customers the same sort of service he 
would want for himself if conditions were 


112 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE . 


reversed, I’m willing to wager that he would 
always have a shop full of work. And he 
wouldn’t have to cut prices to get it, either. 
Service is worth paying for.” 



If you just perform as well as you promise we ought to get 
along nicely” 


Martha Davis walked back to the 0. K. Job 
Print Shop with her head in a whirl. She was 
in the grip of an idea which grew bigger the 
longer she thought about it. Of the truth of the 
iron merchant’s statements as to printers’ 
delays there was no possible question. Her own 


SERVICE. 


113 


experience as stenographer for the Herricon 
Land Company had taught her that printed 
matter, unless ordered far in advance, was sel- 
dom on hand when the occasion for its use arose. 
The real question was : Would customers really 
pay for service? The Herricon Company had 
always haggled over prices; but would they 
have done so if they had known of a printer on 
whose promise of delivery they could absolutely 
depend? It seemed worth finding out, in any 
case. 

John Graham looked up with a smile on his 
round, good-natured face, as the brisk little 
woman hurried into the office and stood beside 
his desk. 

‘ ‘ Sure, Miss Martha, ’ ’ he promised amiably 
when she had laid the sample market letter 
before him and explained the necessity for quick 
delivery. “Yes, we can handle it all right. 
We’ll get ’em over there by three o’clock if you 
say so. There’s less than two hours composi- 
tion, and if we get the copy by ten o’clock we’ll 
have it on the press by noon. No, we won’t fall 
down on any of your jobs.” 

Nothing could have sounded more satisfac- 
tory, yet Martha was not content. 


114 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 


i ‘Mr. Sampson says,” she continued, 4 ‘ that 
if some printer would specialize on keeping his 
promises of delivery, he would always have a 
shop full of work at top-notch prices. He says 
people would be willing to pay for service if 
they could be sure they were going to get it.” 

“Ya-a-as,” drawled her employer, “that’s 
what they all say. I notice, though, that it’s the 
shop that makes the lowest prices that gets the 
most work. The buyers do a lot of howling if 
you fall down on deliveries; but they forget all 
about it by the time the next job comes along, if 
your price is a dollar cheaper than the other 
man’s. And they forget all about your quick 
deliveries, too, if the other man’s price is a dol- 
lar cheaper than yours. Quality of work counts 
for something, of course; but even that argu- 
ment has to take a back seat when the question 
of price comes up. Don’t let ’em fool you, Miss 
Martha. How much can we charge for this 
job?” 

“We didn’t even talk price. Mr. Sampson 
seemed to be more interested in deliveries than 
anything else. ’ ’ 

“Well,” said Graham, as he picked up a 
scratch-pad and began his estimate, “we’ll stick 


SERVICE . 


115 


a good healthy price under Mr. Sampson’s nose, 
and if that doesn’t scare him I’ll begin to 
believe he means what he says. I don’t want to 
deliver the work and then have him try to make 



me drop to the level of the last man who fell 
down on the job. That’s what they usually 
do, you know, when the price isn’t fixed in 
advance.” 

Apparently the price did not frighten Mr. 
Sampson. He protested that it was a third more 


116 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 


than he had been paying ; but when Martha left 
the office she took the order with her, and a little 
later a messenger delivered a bulky package of 
stock at the 0. K. Print Shop. On her desk- 
calendar Martha made a memorandum for the 
following Tuesday, and went forth in search of 
other business. By the end of the week she had 
secured three more jobs on which her promise 
of delivery was the deciding factor. 

At half-past ten on Tuesday morning she 
stepped into a drug store and called up the shop. 

“Has the copy for that Sampson job come 
in yet?” 

i i Yes. The boy just arrived with it. ’ 9 

“Just arrived?” 

“Well, only about half an hour ago. I’ll 
send it to the composing-room right away.” 

“You’d better. You know the work has to 
be delivered before four o’clock.” 

At half -past two she ’phoned the office again 
and was gratified to find that the job, oilce 
started, had been rushed through to comple- 
tion. Yet she wondered just when the copy 
would have reached the composing-room if she 
had not called the matter to John Graham’s 
attention. Martha resolved to follow person- 


SERVICE . 


117 


ally every order she secured on which time of 
delivery was an important consideration. 

But as time went on the necessity for her 
personal supervision grew steadily less. John 
Graham was not slow to realize the worth of the 
reputation which the girl was building for her- 
self and for the shop she represented, and he 
lent her his hearty cooperation. 

At the end of a year Martha Davis had the 
proud record of never having made a promise of 
delivery that had not been rigidly adhered to. 
This record, backed by the excellent work and 
reasonable prices which the up-to-date equip- 
ment of the 0. K. Job Print Shop made possible, 
won an ever increasing number of steady cus- 
tomers, and Martha found that her commission 
account was considerably larger than her salary 
as a stenographer had been. 

A large percentage of the rush orders from 
small business offices are “rush” only because 
of the buyers ’ carelessness and procrastination. 
As Martha became better acquainted with her 
various customers, she found it possible, by skil- 
ful questioning, to dig out many an order to be 
tilled at leisure which would have been pre- 
sented to her a month or two later as an occa- 


118 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 


sion for desperate hurry. This system not only 
increased the volume of business, but made pos- 
sible really remarkable records for delivery of 
work when speed was essential. The young 
saleswoman was trying to give a meaning to the 
word “service” which was embossed on the 
cards she presented. 

“I wish you handled office supplies, Miss 
Davis,’ ’ said T. B. Sampson one day, looking 
up from the sheet of copy for which Martha 
was waiting. 

4 ‘Why?” smiled the girl. 

“If some one took the same interest in our 
supplies that you do in our printing, I wouldn’t 
have to use a rotten pencil like this.” He 
pushed a button on his desk. 

“Freddy,” he addressed the office-boy, “see 
if you can’t find me a different kind of pencil. 
The point of this one breaks every time I try to 
use it.” 

“That’s all the kind they is,” said Freddy. 
“That’s what the Big Four Stationery Com- 
pany sent us when you had me ’phone them that 
we was out of pencils.” 

“You see!” snorted the irate iron merchant. 
“I didn’t even ask a price, and that’s what they 


SERVICE. 


119 


sent! I suppose I'll have to take the time to 
go down to the store and pick them out myself. ’ ’ 

“How do you like this pencil !” asked 
Martha, laying a long yellow octagon on the 
desk before him. 

“Fine!” ejaculated her customer after a 
moment’s trial. 

“I thought you would. That is a No. 2 
Climax, and I know they are good because I 
always use them myself. Suppose I take your 
order for a gross of them and have them sent 
up to you this afternoon. It will solve your 
pencil problems for some time to come, and I 
think I can get a commission out of the sale. 
Do you want me to go ahead!” 

“I certainly wish you would,” said Mr. 
Sampson fervently. “I wish you could handle 
all our supplies in the same way. ’ 9 

“Maybe I will, one of these days,” said 
Martha thoughtfully. 

On her way back to the office, Martha 
stopped at a store which she had patronized in 
her stenographic days and turned in the order 
for pencils, the proprietor readily agreeing to 
allow her a commission not only on this order 
but on any others she might secure. It was a 


120 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 


pleasant and easy way to increase her earnings, 
the girl told herself, but 

“I don’t like the idea of working for two 
different houses,” she explained to John Gra- 
ham, as they sat in the office of the 0. K. Job 
Print Shop. 4 4 We’ve plenty of room here. 
Why don’t you lay in a stock of pencils, carbon 
paper, ink, and standard office supplies of 
various kinds? I can sell an office its miscella- 
neous supplies and its printing at the same visit, 
and it would be a good thing for both of us. 
Most stationery houses handle printing. Why 
shouldn’t a printer handle office equipment?” 

J ohn Graham beamed encouragement. 

4 4 It’s a little out of my line,” he said, 4 4 but 
it sounds interesting. Tell me some more. Just 
what is your plan? You must have some reason 
for thinking you can get business away from the 
established stores. How do you expect to 
do it?” 

4 4 It may seem conceited,” said the girl 
slowly, 4 4 but I believe I know more about the 
needs of an office than the average young sales- 
man who goes out from a stationery and office- 
equipment store. Instead of asking them if they 
need 4 anything,’ I can go right through the list 


SERVICE. 


121 


with them and find out what they do need. My 
idea is to be a sort of purchasing agent for the 
offices that are too small to employ a regular 
buyer. I’d handle nothing but high-class goods 
— stuff that I would pick out for my own use. 
I’d specialize on Service with a big ‘S.’ ” 

“Call it The Service Company, Limited,” 
suggested the printer. 

“No — f/w-Limited, ” laughed Martha. “Mr. 
Graham, I believe you are as enthusiastic as I 
am.” 

“I’m sufficiently enthusiastic to back you to 
succeed,” said John Graham. “I have a few 
thousand dollars tucked away that I’m willing 
to put against your energy and initiative and 
call it an equal partnership, and I think I’m 
getting in on a mighty good thing. ’ ’ 

And that was the beginning of the Service 
Supply Company , whose red label is sufficient 
guaranty of the worth of any article on which 
it appears. From the opening day the success 
of the new company was never in doubt. For, 
in spite of a cynical world, honesty, industry 
and willingness to serve are still as certain of 
their reward as they were in the days when the 
copy-books were written. 


The Miracle 


B IG LOUIS GREER, road salesman for the 
Paragon Paper Company, waddled into 
the lobby of the Stanhope Hotel just as I 
finished registering. It had been many months 
since our trails had crossed, and we shook 
hands with exclamations of gladsome surprise. 

“Let us,” suggested I, “seek a soda-foun- 
tain and there consume Roco-Coco or other 
moral beverages in celebration of this joyous 
reunion. ’ 9 

“Not for me,” said Louis, leading the way 
toward the swinging-doors that marked the most 
popular department of the hotel. “Just before 
I saw you I had a shock, and I require strong 
waters to bring me back to normal. ’ ’ 

We seated ourselves in one of the little 
booths along the wall ; we summoned the 
waiter ; the man in the white apron did his duty. 
Louis put down his glass, lighted a cigar and 
settled his huge back against the groaning par- 
tition with a sigh of content, 

( 122 ) 


THE MIRACLE. 


123 


“Kid, did you ever read much Kipling ?” he 
asked. 

‘ ‘ I eat it, ’ ’ I responded with enthusiasm. 

“In one of his stories there was a German 
chap — I forget his name now — a forest-ranger 
or something of the kind — who used to say 



Kid, did you ever read much Kipling? 


about every fifth or sixth paragraph: ‘I blan 
miracles; und, Mein Gott! dey come off!’ ” 

‘ 4 Something like that, ’ ’ 1 agreed. ‘ ‘ He used 
to set out a few trees and come back a little later 
and find a forest.” 

“That’s the man I mean. Well, I’m here to 
announce that he had nothing on me. Only I 
don’t plan my miracles. They just happen any- 
how. ’ ’ 


124 


THE SPIRIT OF SER VICE. 


“All of which leads up to wliatf” I de- 
manded. ‘ ‘ Tell me the story without the frills. ’ ’ 

“This is the first time I’ve made Stanhope 
in almost two years,” said Louis, “owing to the 
sales manager’s notion that I was needed in the 
New England territory. But when Stanhope 
was on my route I used to get in here once a 
month. Because of the rotten train-service I 
had half a day to kick my heels here, and as soon 
as I had finished my regular calls — and that 
didn’t take long — I always made a bee-line for 
Hagemann’s store. There wasn’t any business 
in it — but, Lord ! What a place to kill time ! 

“Abe Hagemann was a rusty, dusty little 
man about fifty years old, and absolutely out of 
place in a stationery store. He ought to have 
been running a cigar store or a suburban saloon. 
The store itself was a commercial crime. The 
windows always needed washing; the samples 
of engraving and superannuated rubber-stamps 
that hung on either side of the door were stained 
and fly-specked ; the showcases were dingy, none 
too clean, and filled with a scrambled collec- 
tion of junk that was stationary even if it 
wasn’t stationery. It always looked the same. 
The whole establishment, proprietor included, 


THE MIRACLE. 


125 


looked like a misfit suit of clothes that had been 
rained on and then slept in. 

“But in the room at the rear there was solid 
comfort. A lot of big chairs; a long table on 
which one could rest writing materials, maga- 
zines, books, elbows or feet; an open fireplace 
for winter use; an ice-box for the summer; 
good company ; a hearty welcome. What more 
could a loafer ask for? 

“A bunch of salesmen in various lines used 
to gather there, and the pinochle games that 
were fought out across that battered table were 
regular battles. Abe’s wife had died years 
before, he had no children, and I guess he liked 
to have the boys around for company. So long 
as the store paid him a bare living and gave him 
plenty of time to play pinochle, he was perfectly 
satisfied. There was a bell over the door that 
rang whenever the door was opened, and they 
say that one day it jangled just as Hagemann 
was about to meld one hundred aces. 

“ ‘ Hurry, Abe/ warned one of the players, 
‘ there ’s a customer out front. ’ 

“ ‘Hush!’ whispered that enterprising sta- 
tioner. ‘Keep perfectly still, and maybe he’ll 
go away.’ 


126 


TEE SPIRIT OF SERVICE . 


‘ ‘ That may not have been true. I wasn’t 
there and can’t vouch for it. But I was there on 
an afternoon when six customers came in, one 
after another, and when Abe got back to the 
pinochle game I had taken his place and was 
playing his hand. I was playing it a heap better 



Keep perfectly still and maybe he’ll go away.” 


than Abe would have, at that; but he couldn’t 
see it that way. 

‘ ‘ Every time I get good cards, ’ he squealed, 
‘ that infernal bell has to ring, and then one of 
you lobsters picks up my hand and ruins it. 
What did you play that Queen for, Louis?’ 

4 ‘ I looked up at him and grinned. It always 
strikes me funny to see a man so worked up over 
a game of cards. 


THE MIRACLE. 


127 


“ ‘ If I was as busy a man as you are, Abe,’ 
says I, ‘I’d hire a clerk. Then you could give 
proper attention to these important matters 
back here. ’ 

“ ‘By gum!’ says Abe in all seriousness, 
‘that’s just what I’ll do. I’ll get me a nice, 
smart young clerk who can wait on customers, 
and then maybe I’ll have some peace.’ 

“Dave Jessop, a shoe salesman who also 
made Hagemann’s his regular hang-out when in 
Stanhope, met me at Tenneytown a couple of 
weeks later, and he told me that Abe had actu- 
ally hired a clerk and was now prepared to 
entertain his friends at any hour of the day or 
night. He also volunteered the information 
that the new clerk was a six-foot Swede just off 
the farm, and that the store windows had been 
thoroughly washed for the first time in the 
memory of man. 

“When I got back to Chicago I found the 
deal all fixed up to transfer me to Boston, and 
I haven’t been in Stanhope since, until to-day. 
And, believe me, I’ve been looking forward for 
a week to the fun of dropping into Abe’s back 
room and saying ‘ hello ! ’ to the old gang again. ’ ’ 


128 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 


Louis paused and sipped his drink medita- 
tively. 

“ Instead of that, what did I find!” he 
demanded. 

“Oh, Til bite,” said I, accommodatingly. 
“What did you find!” 

“When I saw the store, even from the out- 
side, I had to look up at the sign to make sure 
I hadn ’ t stopped at the wrong place. It was so 
clean it glittered, and I’ve never seen a better 
window display in a town of this size. That was 
jolt number one. When I got inside came jolt 
number two. The old show-cases had been 
replaced by shiny new ones, in which were dis- 
played, so that you couldn’t fail to see them, 
about every dollar-catching device that ever 
pulled money out of the pocket of a customer 
who only intended to buy a nickel pencil. Old 
Abe was dolled up in a new suit, looking so 
prosperous and youthful that I hardly knew 
him, there was a blond White Hope behind one 
counter and a good-looking girl behind the 
other — and all were busy ! 

“ ‘Well,’ thinks I to myself, ‘I’ll step along 
out back until the rush is over,’ and I headed 


THE MIRACLE . 


129 


for the passage that led to the rear. But the 
White Hope beat me to it. 

i ‘ ‘ Oh, Abe, ’ I sang out, ‘ call off your watch- 
dog.' 

“Hagemann sidled over, looking kind of 
sheepish. 4 It's all right, Ole,' he told the clerk, 
and he led the way into the old back room. 

“ There I got jolt number three, and that was 
a real crusher. The big table was gone, there 
was a business-like roll-top desk, a typewriter's 
layout, and where the ice-box had stood was a 
long bookkeepers' desk. In the old days Abe 
had done his bookkeeping on scraps of paper 
and the stub of his check-book. 

“ ‘For the love of Mike!' I gasped, ‘What’s 
happened?' 

“ ‘Just a few changes,' says Abe. ‘If 
you've anything good to offer, maybe I can give 
you an order. ' 

“In a dazed sort of way I opened up my 
sample-case and got down to facts and fig- 
ures. Abe called in the White Hope — Ole 
Bergstrom his name is — and in half an hour 
I had booked the best bit of business I've picked 
up on this trip. When Ole went out the girl 
came in for a minute and Abe introduced us. 


130 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 


Miss Fannie Bergstrom she is — Ole’s sister — 
and considerable girl, take it from me. The 
way she and Abe looked at each other made me 
feel sort of in the way, so as soon as the order 
was signed I picked up my grips and started 
for the door. 



Wliat’s happened? 


“ ‘Wait a second,’ says Abe, ‘and I’ll drive 
you up to the hotel. ’ 

“Abe hustled me into a classy little run- 
about — electric starter and all the up-to-date 
fixings — that I had seen when I came in with- 
out ever suspecting who the owner was. As 
soon as we got a couple of blocks from the store 
he turned the machine up a side street into the 
boulevard and cut down the speed. 

“ ‘What do you think of it all, Louis?’ he 
asked. 


THE MIRACLE. 


131 


“ ‘It looks good to me,’ I told him. 4 You’ve 
got a nice little business there. ’ 

“ 'Aw, shucks V scoffed Abe. 'I’ll bet that 
isn’t what you’re thinking about.’ 

" 'Well,’ I admitted, ‘I have been doing a 
bit of wondering. Things are a whole lot differ- 
ent, you know. ’ 

" 'You are the first one of the old crowd I’ve 
seen for a year,’ says Abe. 'I know just how 
strange it must look to you.’ 

" 'The only thing that bothers me,’ I told 
him, ' is curiosity to know what started this new 
order of things.’ 

“ 'Why, you did,’ says Hagemann. 'If it 
hadn’t been for you I reckon I’d still be drifting 
along the way I was two years ago. That’s why 
I gave you the order. ’ 

"Well, he had me puzzled. I couldn’t see 
where I had anything to do with his regenera- 
tion, and I told him so. You see, I’d forgotten 
about advising him to hire a clerk — just like I 
forget lots of my good jokes. But Abe hadn’t 
forgotten, and it wasn’t any joke to him. 

" 'Except for what you said,’ he went on, 
'I wouldn’t have hired Ole when he came in 
next day looking for a job. The idea of having 


132 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 


a clerk liad never occurred to me before. But I 
put him to work, and, do you know, that boy 
made me kind of ashamed of myself. He was 
so darned industrious and loyal and proud of 
his job and ambitious to make the business suc- 
cessful that before I knew it I was working 



harder than I had ever worked before — to keep 
from losing Ole’s respect. He took it for 
granted that I knew all there was to know about 
the stationery business, and to keep him from 
finding out what a back number I really was I 
subscribed for a trade journal and began to be 
on the alert for pointers. 

“ ‘The boys dropped in just the same as they 
always did; but I had mighty little time for 
games and gossip, myself. The store had paid' 


THE MIRACLE. 


133 


me a bare living, even when I let it run itself; 
but when we had cleared out our dead stock and 
begun to do some real hustling I thought I could 
see a chance to make some real profits. And I 
don’t know of any game that’s more interesting 
than running a money-making business. We 
hired an outside solicitor to go after a class of 
trade I had never attempted to touch before, 
and he brought in a lot of orders, too. We really 
began to look like a pretty fair imitation of a 
business house. 

“ ‘We needed some one to look after the 
bookkeeping, and it happened that Ole had a 
sister who was just out of business college; but 
it was a problem where to put her. ’ 

‘ ‘ ‘ So you fired out the gang and fitted up the 
back room as an office,’ I concluded. 

“ ‘ Yes,’ said Abe. 4 1 hated to do it, after 
training the boys to make their headquarters at 
my place, but there didn’t seem to be anything 
else to do. Afterwards I was glad, because I 
didn’t want a girl like Miss Fannie to be hear- 
ing the kind of talk that used to come out of 
that room.’ 

“ ‘Seems to me,’ I jollied him, ‘you’re sort 
of interested in Miss Fannie.’ 


134 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE . 


“ ‘I’ve got a right to be/ lie came back at 
me. ‘We’re going to be married in June. 
That’s something else I owe you, Louis.’ 

“And then the old man dumped me at the 
hotel. He wouldn’t even come in and have a 
drink. He was in too big a hurry to get back 
to his business and his Fannie — both of which, 
according to him, I am responsible for. ’ ’ 

Louis lighted a fresh cigar. 

“What about it, kid?” he asked, with a grin 
that almost bisected his round, pink face. 

‘ ‘ Don ’t you think that as a miracle-worker I ’ve 
got Kipling’s Dutchman skinned forty ways 
from the Jack?” 


/ 


A Family Affair 

EED GRAYSON, the youthful manager of 



the Prime Adding Machine Company’s 


Millville branch, looked up from the 
reports he had been studying, as the rotund 
form of Dennis Blair — formerly his chief but 
now his assistant — appeared in the doorway. 

“I was hoping you would come in,” he said. 
“I wanted to ask you about the Gas Company. 
We don’t seem to have even one machine in 
there.” 

“No, and we never will,” grunted Blair, 
dropping into a chair with a tired sigh. The 
elevation of Grayson to the manager’s desk had 
sent Blair once more into active service as a 
salesman. Good-natured and loyal though he 
was, the assistant manager would have been less 
than human had he not at times chafed at the 
necessity of reporting to and taking orders from 
the inexperienced Grayson. And Dennis was 
very human. 

“No,” he repeated. “That’s one concern 
you might as well cross off your list and 
forget.” 


( 135 ) 


136 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 


‘ 1 Nonsense !” said Grayson sharply. “We 
can’t afford to forget any concern that sends 
out approximately fifty thousand bills a month. 
They need us as much as we need them — or 
more; and it ought to be merely a matter of 
putting the case before them so that they can 
see it.” 



That's one concern you might as well cross off your list arid 
forget ” 


“All right,” Blair chuckled, grimly. “Go 
to it. I’ve called on them at least twenty times 
in the past four or five years; Bryce did his 
darndest while I had charge of the office here; 
and I was up there again only last week. Old 
‘ Stealthy Steve ’ Appleby will let you talk your- 
self blue in the face without raising an objection 
or asking a question ; but when your little ora- 
tion is over he’ll close the discussion in just four 
words.” 


A FAMILY AFFAIR. 


137 


“And those words are V 9 

“ 4 Not in the market/ 99 quoted Blair with 
an excellent imitation of the chief accountant’s 
mincing manner. “You were lucky on that 
Light and Power Company deal. They wanted 
the machines, and I deserved to lose out for not 
finding out whether the factory could or would 
build them. But this is different. Here they 
don’t want the machines, and if you can get by 
that barrier I’ll take off my hat to you and 
admit that you ought to be sitting at that desk. 
There are limits to luck, though. Better let well 
enough alone, and rest on your laurels.” 

Blair’s reference was to a sale of fifty spe- 
cially built machines to the Millville Light and 
Power Company, engineered by Grayson during 
his first week with the Prime Adding Machine 
Company. The sale had resulted in Grayson’s 
appointment as manager, superseding Blair, 
who had been filling the position since the sud- 
den death of his predecessor. In the opinion of 
Horace Prime, president and mechanical genius 
of the Adding Machine Company, the sale indi- 
cated a happy combination of initiative and per- 
sistence; but to the sales force at Millville it 


138 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE . 


was luck, pure and simple, and they had not 
striven to conceal their opinion. Grayson was 
getting a little tired of it. 

“Luck be blowed!” he ejaculated. “I’ve 
heard all of that sort of talk I care for. When 
a concern needs our machines, and has the 
money to pay for them, it isn’t good luck when 
we sell them nor bad luck when we fail. It isn’t 
a question of luck at all. In one case we ’re giv- 
ing our company proper representation, and in 
the other we ’re not. ’ ’ 

4 ‘ Piffle ! ’ ’ exclaimed Blair, angrily. ‘ ‘ Talk is 
almighty cheap. Go up and spring that on 
Appleby — and see what it gets you. If you 
make a sale I’ll not ask for any commission, 
even if it is in my territory.” He glared bel- 
ligerently at his critic. “You can have my 
whole territory on thirty minutes’ notice if you 
want it, ’ ’ he added in accents of challenge. 

“Keep your shirt on,” Grayson soothed him. 
“You know perfectly well I don’t want your ter- 
ritory. But I am going to take you up on your 
proposition to turn the Gas Company deal over 
to me. There must be some way of selling 
them.” 


A FAMILY AFFAIR. 


139 


Relating the day’s doings to liis wife that 
evening, Grayson expressed his profound con- 
viction that he talked too much. 

“I talked myself into a hole,” he averred, 
“that I’ll have to sell myself out of. It must be 
a pretty tough proposition or Blair would have 



I tallced myself into a hole.” 


made some progress with them in the past five 
years ; yet, after what I said, if I fall down the 
whole sales force will have the laugh on me.” 

Mrs. Grayson smiled with calm confidence in 
her husband’s prowess. “The hard ones are 
the ones you like, aren’t they, Fred!” 

“Don’t you ever believe it! The ones I like 
best are the concerns that send in their orders 
by mail. A ball-player doesn’t break his fingers 
going after the hard chances because he prefers 
them that way. He does it because he has to if 


140 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 


he wants to stick in fast company. And that’s 
my case exactly. I’ve got to make this sale to 
prove to the owner and the other members of 
the team that I belong in the Big League. ’ ’ 

“I hope your ideas are not as mixed as your 
metaphors, ’ ’ she commented. 

6 ‘ Almost, but not quite. I have a scheme that 
ought to work. I’d fall for it myself. I’ll see 
Appleby to-morrow morning and try it out. ’ ’ 

But Grayson was not destined to see the 
chief accountant of the Millville Gas Company 
the next morning. The card he sent in by the 
red-haired office-boy with a request for an inter- 
view came back in the hands of a pleasant-faced 
young man whose features seemed vaguely 
familiar. 

“My name is Brown, Mr. Grayson,” he in- 
troduced himself. “Mr. Appleby has instructed 
me to say that we are not interested in adding 
machines, and he sees no profit either to you or 
himself in discussing them. I’m sorry.” He 
held out his hand with a friendly smile. “I 
think you are a neighbor of mine, at 1449 Sher- 
wood street. I have the apartment directly over 
you, and we’ve been riding down-town on the 
same street car for the past month.” 


A FAMILY AFFAIR. 


141 


Grayson grasped the other’s hand and ac- 
knowledged the identification ; but the intrusion 
of the personal topic could not divert him from 
the subject in which he was vastly more inter- 
ested. 

“Look here, Mr. Brown,” he urged, “this 
matter is too important to your company to be 
passed oft this way. Mr. Appleby doesn’t 
understand what we want to do. I am willing 
to go the limit to get your business. I want to 
do something that has never been done before 
for anybody. I want to build a machine spe- 
cially equipped to do your work. I want to put 
it in here on trial, with an operator who will 
work under the direction of the head of your 
billing department and who will instruct the 
other clerks in its use. At the end of thirty 
days, if you are still not interested in the ma- 
chine, it will be taken out and the experiment 
will have cost you nothing, for I will pay the 
operator’s salary myself. If you elect to have 
it remain, your own employees will then be able 
to operate it, and you need pay us not one cent 
until the saving in clerk hire has equaled the 
price of the machine. ’ ’ 


142 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 


“That certainly is a liberal proposition, ’ ’ 
exclaimed Brown. “I don’t see how yon can 
afford to make it. ’ ’ 

4 4 I can do it because I know the machine will 
make good, ’ ’ declared the enthusiastic salesman. 
4 4 1 can do it because I know that one machine in 
your billing department, fairly tested, will mean 
an order for at least a dozen more on which I 
shall not have to make special terms — and I 
want that business !” 

The pleasant-faced young man shook his 
head, regretfully. “I’m afraid I can’t hold out 
much hope. I’ll put it up to Mr. Appleby some 
time to-day; but I know the answer already. 
The chief doesn’t believe in office machinery. It 

saves too much in ” He looked behind him, 

hastily, saw that the red-haired office-boy was 
within earshot, and did not finish the sentence. 
“You’re bucking up against a stone wall,” he 
said in a lower tone. 4 4 Come up to my apart- 
ment this evening and I’ll try to make it clear 
to you that you couldn’t get your machines in 
the Gas Company offices if you installed them 
free of charge. I’ll tell you what Appleby says 
— and some other things that may enable you to 
guess why he says it.” 


A FAMILY AFFAIR . 


143 


“I’ll be there,” agreed Grayson. And he 
was. 

Shortly after dinner the two men were sit- 
ting beside the library table in Brown’s snug 
apartment. Mrs. Brown had stepped across the 
corridor to call on a neighboring flat-dweller, 
and they had the room to themselves. 

As Brown had predicted, the chief accoun- 
tant’s decision had been distinctly adverse. He 
did not care to consider any sort of proposition 
from the Adding Machine Company, and re- 
quested that any future callers be promptly 
informed of that fact. 4 4 And that, ’ ’ Brown con- 
cluded, “would appear to settle the matter.” 

Grayson dejectedly studied the end of his 
cigar. “You hinted something this morning,” 
he said slowly, “about a reason for Appleby 
taking that stand. I’d be mightily interested to 
know what it can be. ’ ’ 

The man from the Gas Company took a slip 
of paper from his pocket and passed it over for 
the other’s inspection. 

“That’s a list of the clerks in Appleby’s 
department. In checking it up, bear in mind the 
fact that Appleby married a Miss Clark and 
that his mother’s maiden name was Daley. 


144 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 


When yon Ve counted the Applebys, Clarks and 
Daleys on that list and added a few more names 
to cover friends of the family, yon ’ll begin to see 
why 4 Stealthy Steve’ Appleby is not interested 
in any device that will save clerk hire. ’ ’ 

‘ ‘ Great Caesar ! ’ ’ gasped the adding-machine 
salesman as he read the long list. “ It’s a pretty 



close corporation, isn’t it? What branch of the 
family do you belong to ! ” 

“I’m an outsider,” said the other, grimly, 
“and I’ll be an outsider in another sense before 
long. I’ve been with the company ever since I 
left high school — over ten years ; and I ex- 
pected to be with it for life. But since Mr. 
Houghteling went to New York and Appleby 
has been in charge it has been just a question 


A FAMILY AFFAIR. 


145 


of how long I’d last. Appleby has been gradu- 
ally weeding out the old crowd to make room for 
his own gang. He has a poisonous swarm of 
relatives, and old Steve has been hard put to 
find places for all of them ; but as soon as one of 
them really needs a job he gets it. I’ve hung 
on longer than any of the other outsiders, 
because I have been willing to do my work and 
keep my mouth shut when I saw the office filled 
up with a bunch of incompetents, and I’ve been 
useful in drilling the recruits, too. But now 
Appleby has a brother-in-law who is out of a 
job — a pretty fair bookkeeper he is, they say — 
so I’m slated to go at the end of the month. 
That’s why I’m sore enough to tell you all 
this. ’ ’ 

“Why don’t you complain to the president 
of the company?” suggested Grayson. “I 
hardly see how Appleby can get away with a 
deal like that with the officers watching him.” 

“That’s the trouble,” groaned Brown. 
“They don’t watch him. If you were familiar 
with the affairs of the Gas Company you would 
know that it is practically a one-man concern. 
It is a corporation, right enough, but old David 
Houghteling owns almost all the stock, and since 


146 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 


he has gone to New York to live Appleby is sup- 
posed to be his personal representative. He 
handles Houghteling’s real-estate interests here, 
and while he isn’t an officer, to all intents and 
purposes he runs the Gas Company. The fig- 
urehead treasurer and the rest of the officers do 
what he tells them to. So long as the dividends 
come in regularly I guess Houghteling doesn’t 
care what Appleby does.” 

Grayson shook his head in emphatic nega- 
tion. “I don’t believe it for one minute. No 
man likes to be robbed or used for a conve- 
nience. If any charity is to be passed out in the 
line of pensioner jobs, the man with the money 
wants to do it himself. Suppose we figure this 
situation over. Maybe we can see a way for us 
both to beat this game. ’ ’ 

“I’m listening,” agreed the other cautiously. 

When the adding-machine salesman de- 
scended the flight of steps that led to his own 
apartment, he carried in an inside pocket the 
list of Gas Company employees. Opposite each 
name was noted the exact relationship its owner 
bore to the chief accountant, and scribbled on 
the back of the sheet was the New York address 
of David Houghteling. 


A FAMILY AFFAIR. 


147 


“I’m beginning to see day light/ ’ he contided 
to his wife, as he smoked a good-night pipe 
before retiring. “I’ll have that crook Appleby 
eating out of my hand before the week is over.” 

That night the young manager slept badly. 
The plan that had appeared so perfect when 
first conceived, after an hour’s consideration 
seemed as full of holes as a Swiss cheese. He 
had planned to make up a written proposition 
to the Gas Company on the basis of his talk with 
Brown, on terms which would absolutely guar- 
antee the corporation against expense in case 
the machine proved unsatisfactory. He would 
secure from the Millville Light and Power Com- 
pany a detailed statement of the saving they 
had effected since the installation of the 
machines — a sort of before-and-after-taking 
testimonial. He would agree that in case the 
sample machine was retained in service, pay- 
ment could be deferred until tlie saving in clerk 
hire equaled the purchase price. The originals 
of both papers he would mail to Appleby; but 
copies would be forwarded to David Houghtel- 
ing, and he would so inform Appleby when he 
called for his decision. Then, if the chief 
accountant still refused to see reason, he would 


148 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 


casually mention his belief that Mr. Houghtel- 
ing might be interested in the personnel of the 
office force. Using that threat as a club, Gray- 
son was confident that he could at least secure 
an order for a trial machine, which would save 
his face so far as his own sales staff was con- 
cerned. But the longer he considered the plan 
the less attractive it appeared to him. 

4 ‘Fighting the Devil with fire may be all 
right,’ ’ he muttered, “but fighting a crook with 
blackmail is just bribery with reverse English. 
I guess I’ll have to stick to direct methods.” 

“What was that, Fred?” called his wife, who 
had been awakened by his mumbling and rest- 
less tossing. 

‘ ‘ Oh, I was just deciding to trust to rny bat- 
ting eye and not waste time trying to steal the 
other team’s signals.” With which cryptic 
words on his lips he fell asleep. 

The following morning Grayson sought and 
obtained an interview with Sidney Arnold, 
president of the Millville National Bank, at 
which institution he had formerly been em- 
ployed, and where, thanks to some sizable com- 
mission checks, he now carried a respectable 
account. 


A FAMILY AFFAIR. 


149 


Thence he proceeded to the office of the Mill- 
ville Light and Power Company, where he had 
a most satisfactory half hour’s interview with 
Braden, the chief accountant. 

Late that afternoon while Grayson was 
clearing up the tag-ends of the day’s business, 
came a ring at the telephone. Blair, who was 
standing beside the desk, reached for the instru- 
ment, but the young manager was before him. 

“Yes, Mr. Arnold, this is Grayson,” he said. 
“You got him? I certainly appreciate this. 
Friday morning at ten o’clock, you say? I’ll be 
there. ’ ’ He hung up the receiver and turned to 
his assistant a radiant face. 

“You’ll have to take charge of the office for 
the rest of the week,” he announced, “I’ve got 
to be out of town for a few days.” 

“That’s all right, but what’s the joke?” 
Blair was curious to know. “You’re grinning 
like a canary-eating cat. ’ ’ 

“There is a joke somewhere about the situa- 
tion,” the other admitted good-naturedly, “and 
I’m going to gamble the price of a trip to New 
York to find out whether or not it’s on me.” 
And with that eminently unsatisfactory explan- 


150 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 


ation tlie corpulent assistant manager was 
forced to be content. 

Had Blair witnessed the jubilee meeting 
between Grayson and young Brown, of the Gas 
Company, on the evening of the former’s return 
from the metropolis, he would have been still 
more puzzled ; but the manager showed no 
signs of excitement when he appeared at the 
office, and in a week his temporary absence was 
forgotten. 

Not so, however, was the criticism that had 
fallen on Blair regarding his failure to place the 
machines in the offices of the Gas Company, and 
the big salesman lost no opportunity to inquire, 
with quiet malice, as to Grayson’s progress 
toward a sale. 

“I’m working on it,” was Grayson’s stand- 
ard reply; but one day, three weeks after his 
first conversation with Brown, he electrified 
Blair by adding: “and this is what I have 
accomplished so far.” So saying, he displayed 
before the other’s astonished eyes a formal 
order for twelve special machines, of the same 
general type as those furnished the Power Com- 
pany, but modified to meet the requirements of 
the Gas Company’s slightly different system. 


A FAMILY AFFAIR. 


151 


Blair laid the paper on the desk and sol- 
emnly removed his hat. 6 ‘ I promised to take off 
my hat to you if you put this over, ’ ’ he said in 
awe-struck tones, “and I’ve got to make good. 
You’re a wonder.” 

His eyes sought the order again. 



You’re a wonder ” 


“Hold on!” he cried sharply. “This is no 
good. It is signed ‘ J. S. Brown,’ and you ought 
to know that no order from the Gas Company is 
any good unless it is signed by Appleby himself. 
I thought there must he a bull somewhere. Who 
is this Brown?” 

“This Brown,” said Grayson sweetly, “is 
the new chief accountant of the Gas Company. 
Appleby wouldn’t talk to me, so I had him fired 


152 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 


and a more reasonable man put in his place. It 
ought to be a lesson to everybody not to stand in 
my way when I go out to sell machines. ’ ’ 

The assistant manager dropped heavily in a 
chair and took his head firmly between his 
hands. 

“Yes, sir,” he said humbly, “just as you 
say, sir.” 

“Brace up,” laughed Grayson, “and I’ll tell 
you the whole story. ’ ’ And he did so, beginning 
with Brown’s illuminating revelations. 

“I saw there was little use talking to Apple- 
by,” he explained, “after I discovered his real 
objection to trying out the machine. He would 
have queered it in some way even if we had got 
one in there on trial. And I also was pretty 
sure that unless I was well vouched for I 
wouldn’t get much consideration from Hough- 
teling. So I asked Mr. Arnold, of the bank, to 
give me a letter of introduction. He did a great 
deal better. He called Houghteling on the long- 
distance ’phone, made an appointment for me, 
and gave me such a boost that I met the old man 
on an altogether different basis than that of a 
salesman. He was prepared to credit anything 


A FAMILY AFFAIR. 


153 


I said to him. I had the facts and figures, and 
the rest of it was like taking candy from a child. 

“Appleby is a crook, and a crook is the 
easiest man in the world to beat when you once 
get the goods on him. Hougliteling came down 
from New York the first of last week, turned the 
whole organization upside down, and put Brown 
in charge. The machines were plainly needed, 
and — as you used to tell me — where the 
machines are needed they sell themselves. So 
I guess you can keep your hat on, after all. ,, 

“No,” said Blair, decidedly, “that hat 
stays off!” 


Jerry Lane Grows Up 

S AMUEL HODGE, Tenneytown agent of the 
Kapatype Typewriter Company, was a 
sick man. The pain he had diagnosed as 
collywobbles, caused by a too hearty luncheon, 
failed to yield to his favorite prescription of 
Bourbon in three-finger doses. So he had gone 
home and sent for a doctor. The man of medi- 
cine looked wise, spun his mental roulette-wheel, 
and the fateful marble clicked into the compart- 
ment labeled “appendicitis.” Already in the 
hospital on the hill they were whetting their 
knives and inspecting the ether supply. 

Freckle-faced Jerry Lane, hastily summoned 
to his chief’s bedside, received, between groans 
of anguish, instructions as to the conduct of the 
business now suddenly left in his care. 

i i There — ain ’t — much — hanging — fire, ’ ’ 
grunted the sufferer. Then the pain eased 
momentarily and his brain cleared. “Oh, yes,” 
he said, “there’s one thing that’s got to be taken 
care of to-morrow. The Rasmussen Specialty 
Company is placing an order for ten machines. 

( 154 ) 


JERKY LANE GROWS UP. 


155 


I’ve got it practically cinclied. You want to be 
up there at nine o’clock sharp, and don’t come 
away without the order. Rasmussen will try to 
bluff you ; but he wants our machine, and there 
won’t be any excuse for not selling him.” 

“ Yes, sir,” said Jerry with the blatant confi- 
dence of youth and inexperience, “I’ll sell him. 
lie can’t bluff me.” 



Appendicitis.” 


“Lord, I wish I could be there myself!” 
groaned his employer. “I don’t know what 
notion Rasmussen 'may take at the last minute. 
He’s a tough proposition for a green kid like you 
to tackle. Don’t let him put anything over on 
you; but — get — that — business!” 

The pain was gripping him again, and he 
drew up his knees in agony. Mrs. Hodge, who 
had been hovering just outside the door, hur- 
ried in. 


156 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 


“You’ll have to go right away,” she cried 
distractedly. “You are exciting him.” And 
she hustled Jerry out of the room. 

A bull-like roar of ‘ 4 Get that business ! ’ ’ was 
the last thing he heard as he left the house. 

“Huh!” he said to himself, as he waited on 
the corner for his car. “He seems to think 
nobody knows anything but S. Hodge. I guess I 
could sell just as many typewriters as he does if 
he didn’t pick out all the fat prospects for him- 
self. Well, anyhow, I’ve got my chance now.” 

It was true that by the time Mr. Hodge had 
selected the customers he preferred to handle 
personally, the pickings that were left for his 
assistant were slim indeed. Jerry would have 
been less than human if his sorrow at his 
employer’s illness had not been tempered by the 
thought that for several weeks he would have a 
free hand. 

The order from the Rasmussen Specialty 
Company he counted as already booked, and he 
handed in his card the next morning with the 
utmost confidence. 

But by the time he had waited an hour in the 
outer office his cock-sureness had begun to ebb. 
It vanished completely when the door of the pri- 


JERRY LANE GROWS UP. 


157 


vate office opened to emit Jenkins, of the Feath- 
ertouch Writing Machine Company, who passed 
out jauntily with the air of one whose cares are 
few. 

“Coom in,” invited Mr. Rasmussen. 
‘ ‘ Where ’s Sam Hodge f ’ 1 



Jerry told him. 

“Vail, that iss too bad,” commiserated the 
big Norwegian, shrewdly sizing up the scared- 
looking youngster. “If Sam was here we could 
maybe do some beesiness; but now, Ay don’t 
know . 9 9 

“I can take your order just as well as Mr. 
Hodge could,” protested Jerry. “I know just 
as much about the machine as anybody does.” 

“Yaas?” commented the buyer. “Vail, the 
machine iss all right. And so iss the Feather- 


158 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE . 


touch. How mooch will you allow us on our ten 
old No. 3 Champions ?” 

Jerry consulted his printed schedule. 

“For all numbered under 50,000 we allow 
$12.00; between 50,000 and 100,000, $15.00; 
over 100,000, $18.00.’ ’ He looked at the cus- 
tomer, expectantly. 

Mr. Rasmussen extended his hairy hand. 
‘ ‘ Gude-bye , 9 9 he said, simply. 

Jerry felt the ground slipping from beneath 
his feet. 

“But — but ,” he stammered. 

“Gude-bye,” repeated Mr. Rasmussen. 

i ‘ But I want that order . 9 9 

“You talk sooch foolishness,” said the 
Norseman. “Why should Ay geev you the 
order when the Feathertouch people will a flat 
allowance make of $25.00 a machine ! 9 9 

Jerry was desperate. 

“Will — will they do that!” be blurted out. 

Mr. Rasmussen calmly turned his broad back 
on the younger man and began an ostentatious 
study of some papers on his desk. It was evi- 
dent to his trained eye that he had the salesman 
on the run. 


JERRY LANE GROWS UP. 


159 


It was indeed so. All Jerry Lane could see 
was the vanishing order. It was his first expe- 
rience with a dickering buyer where an order of 
any magnitude was involved. He remembered 
Mr. Hodge’s parting adjuration to “Get that 
business,” and his heart sank at the thought of 
explaining how he had lost it to his none too tol- 
erant chief. Suddenly it occurred to him that 
on an order for ten machines his company might 
make a concession. 

“Say, Mr. Rasmussen,” he begged, “give 
me time to talk to the factory on the long- 
distance ’phone, and maybe I can meet that 
allowance. I can let you know this afternoon. ’ ’ 

Now this was exactly what Mr. Rasmussen 
did not want him to do. The question of a spe- 
cial discount had already been thrashed out with 
Hodge by the buyer and with the factory by 
Hodge. The factory was standing firmly by its 
printed schedule of allowances, as was indeed 
the Feathertouch and the other standard ma- 
chines sold in that territory. The jaunty bear- 
ing of the Feathertouch representative, which 
had sent such a chill to Jerry’s heart, was 
merely a mask for defeat. Rasmussen had thor- 
oughly decided to equip his office with Rapa- 


160 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE . 


types ; but his thrifty soul rejoiced at the pros- 
pect of jockeying the green salesman into a con- 
cession. 

4 ‘ For what do you take me? n he questioned 
virtuously. “Ay would not do sooch a thing — 
to tell you a competitor’s price and let you meet 



“ Give me time to talk to the factory on the long-distance 
’phone” 


it. That would not be fair. No, Meester Lane. 
Thirty-five dollars a machine iss the least Ay 
could accept from your coompany.” 

Jerry’s heart sank some more. This was 
monstrous. He knew perfectly well the factory 
would not make any such allowance. In com- 
parison $25.00 seemed reasonable. 

“Please, Mr. Rasmussen,” he implored. 
“Do let me put it up to them at $25.00. Mr. 
Hodge being sick — and everything — sort of 
makes me responsible. I’d — I’d hate to lose 
that order.” 


JERRY LANE GROWS UP. 


161 


Rasmussen really pitied him, but he was 
adamant where a dollar was concerned. The 
chicken seemed about ready to pluck. 

“If Ay yust could,’ ’ he began hesitantly. 
Then he shook his head. 1 ‘ But no, ’ 9 he decided. 
“Ay must answer the Feathertouch people 
before noon. If Ay wait for you Ay lose them. 
And your coompany — we do not know what they 
might say. Maybe yes, maybe no.” 

“Oh, I’m sure they would do it,” cried 
Jerry, despairingly. 

Mr. Rasmussen beamed on him. This was 

i 

what he had been angling for. 

“Vail, then,” he said, “because Sam Hodge 
iss sick and you are a yoong man, Ay will geev 
you this chance : you can have the order at an 
allowance of $25.00 on each old machine. But 
you must write the order now, and we will both 
sign it and the deal will over be. That iss all 
Ay can do, Meester Lane. Take it or leave it. ’ ’ 

Jerry took it. And not until he was on the 
street with the signed order in his pocket did he 
begin to realize that perhaps he had been a little 
hasty. He rather wished that Rasmussen had 
not insisted on keeping a copy of the order, 


162 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 


bearing his own signature as “ assistant man- 
ager. ’ ’ He decided he had better get the factory 
on the long-distance ’phone at once, and secure 
the general sales agent’s approval of the allow- 
ance. 

“Any mail!” he asked the stenographer as 
he entered the office. 

“Just a circular from headquarters,” said 
little Miss Perkins. “Here it is.” 

Jerry took the sheet she extended and 
glanced through it. His face went very white. 
Had he been a slender Miss instead of a raw- 
boned, freckled young giant, he might have 
fainted, for this is what he read: 

Buffalo, N. Y., March 20, 1914. 

To All Agents: 

On and after this date, please note that no allowance for 
old machines taken in part payment for Rapatypes shall in any 
case exceed the amounts listed in the printed schedule of allow- 
ances dated January 1, 1913. Any request for the violation of 
this rule will be deemed an admission on the part of the agent 
of his inability to handle our business in a manner satisfactory 
to us, and we shall take immediate steps toward his replacement. 

Respectfully, 

B. D. Grause, General Sales Agent. 

P. S. — This means you, Hodge. There is positively nothing 
doing on that Rasmussen deal. It is not necessary, in the first 
place, and we wouldn’t do it anyhow. — B. D. G. 


JERRY LANE GROWS UP. 


163 


“What’s the matter, Mr. Lane?” inquired 
the black-eyed Miss Perkins, solicitously. “I 
hope you’re not having an attack of appendi- 
citis, too. You look quite sick.” 

“I am quite sick,” groaned Jerry. And he 
told her all about it. 

“Well,” she commented when he had fin- 
ished, “one thing is certain. The order has to 
be filled. If I were you, Mr. Lane, I’d report it 
to the factory as a straight order for ten 
machines, and say it will be decided later 
whether the old Champions will be turned in at 
the schedule allowance or not. Luckily we keep 
the original orders here. Maybe Mr. Hodge can 
straighten it out when he gets back. ’ ’ 

“I know one thing he’ll straighten out,” 
sighed the downcast young salesman. “He’ll 
straighten me out of the door.” 

“If I thought that,” said the little woman, 
impatiently, “I’d certainly get busy and 
straighten it out myself before he gets back. 
There must be some way. ’ ’ 

“That’s easy to say, but what way is there?” 
‘ ‘ Oh, don ’t ask me. I ’ll bet I ’d find it — if I 
were a man, ’ ’ she jeered. 


/ 


1G4 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 


“Well, just pretend for a minute that you 
are Jerry Lane,” he persisted. 

“I said, if I were a man/ 7 she repeated with 
cruel emphasis. 

J erry went out of the office with his head in 
the air and a mighty resolve in his heart. Some- 
how — he was not clear just how — he would 
make that saucy little stenographer eat her 
words. Meanwhile it was lunch time, and he 
felt stirring within him a desire to eat some- 
thing more substantial than words. 

In accordance with a custom of long stand- 
ing, he turned into the Tenneytown Stationery 
Company to pick up his regular luncheon com- 
panion, Harold Fenner. Fenner was appar- 
ently busy with a customer, so Jerry leaned 
against the glass showcase and waited. Pres- 
ently the stationery salesman called to him : 

“Come here a minute, Jerry. This gentle- 
man wants to know something about typewriters 
that maybe you can tell him. I can’t. 7 

“What I want to know,” said the stranger, a 
brisk-looking man whose clothes were evidently 
not cut by a Tenneytown tailor, “is where I can 
rent a typewriter for a few days. I have a lot 
of very technical reports to make out, and it is 


JERRY LANE GROWS UP. 


165 


almost impossible to get satisfactory results by 
dictating them to a public stenographer — if, 
indeed there is one in town. If I could just get 
a machine somewhere I’d gladly pay well for 
it.” 

“We sell typewriters,” said Jerry, “but we 
don’t rent them, and I don’t know of anybody in 
Tenney town that does. We’ve been asked about 
that a good many times before, and I’m pretty 
sure there’s not a typewriter in town that’s for 
rent. Our company has a deal with some con- 
cern in Chicago to take all the old machines we 
get in trade, and of course we would not rent a 
new machine. ’ ’ 

“The hotel ought to keep a machine for that 
purpose,” said the stranger indignantly. “I 
don’t want to buy one, but I’d gladly pay five 
dollars for the use of one for a day or two. 
Come up to the Blauden House with me and 
maybe we can talk the proprietor into buying 
one. ’ ’ 

Under the circumstances Jerry did not stop 
for luncheon. They found Jacob Blauden and 
laid the case before him. 

“Pay a hundred dollars for a machine?” he 
snorted. “Well, I guess not! One of these days 


106 


TEE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 


when I get down to Chicago I may buy a second- 
hand one. They tell me you can pick them up 
for forty or fifty dollars. But I couldn’t get one 
in time to do you any good, sir . 9 ’ 

Jerry had the first inspiration of his busi- 
ness career. For the first time in his expe- 
rience he produced a selling idea of his own. 

“Why, that reminds me,” he said, quickly. 
“We have a No. 3 Champion that we took in 
trade to-day that hasn’t gone in to the factory 
yet. I could sell it to you for — let me see — 
for, say, forty-five dollars; and guarantee to 
keep it in repair for a year.” 

Jacob Blauden turned to the stranger. 
“You’d pay five dollars for the use of it for 
a day or two ? ’ ’ 

4 4 1 would that. ’ ’ 

“You’ve sold something, then,” said the 
hotel man to the exultant Jerry. “Get it over 
here as quick as you can. ’ ’ 

Jerry rushed back to the office, took a new 
Rapatype out of stock and sped to the Rasmus- 
sen Specialty Company, where he exchanged the 
new machine for the best looking of the old 
Champions. In an hour he had made delivery 


JERKY LANE GROWS UP. 


167 


to Jacob Blauden and the latter ’s check was in 
his pocket. 

“ It’s a poor game that can’t be worked more 
than once,” he told himself, and he made the 
rounds of the three other hotels which Tenney- 
town boasted. He made one actual sale, though 



He turned right around and sold those machines to people who 
wouldn’t have bought new ones.” 


the price was cut to thirty-five dollars, and the 
other two proprietors were sufficiently inter- 
ested to give him good grounds for hope. 

“Am I a man? ” he bantered the little stenog- 
rapher, when, lunchless but happy, he returned 
to the office. 

“You’re growing up,” she admitted, with a 
smile that belied the grudging tone, “but even 
if you sell all the hotels in town you’ll still have 
six machines left on your hands. What will you 
do with them ? ’ ’ 


168 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 


“If you were a man he said, complacently, 
‘ ‘ you ’d know. I have a scheme. ’ ’ 

“Yes?” she questioned. 

“Just good hard plugging. Plenty of these 
little concerns — groceries and the like — 
haven’t typewriters, and it’s useless trying to 
sell them new machines. There is no second- 
hand typewriter company in Tenneytown, and 
while the little fellows may see the advertise- 
ments of the Chicago and New York secondhand 
dealers, they haven’t initiative enough to write 
to them. They don’t really know they want 
typewriters. Well, it’s going to be my job to 
make ’em know it. ’ ’ 

4 ‘ My ! You are growing up ! ” she exclaimed. 

Two weeks later Mr. Samuel Hodge, minus 
one vermiform appendix, flabby as to cheek and 
shaky as to leg, received the mingled congratu- 
lations and apologies of that shrewd Norseman, 
Nils Rasmussen. 

“Ay couldn’t help it, Sam,” he explained. 
‘ 4 That boy yust coom up and begged me to stick 
him. It was a shame to do it — but, Sam, you 
don’t know how Ay was tempted. That boy iss 
sooch a fool!” 


JERKY LANE GROWS UP. 


169 


“I don’t know, Nils, I don’t know,” said 
Mr. Hodge, quite without rancor. “He turned 
right around and sold those machines to people 
who wouldn’t have bought new ones, and made 
an average profit of ten dollars apiece. I’d like 
to hire a couple of more fools like him. I 
wouldn’t need to work. And I don’t exactly 
look on him as a boy any more. If results are 
any test, he is a pretty fair specimen of a grown- 
up man. ’ ’ 


The Old Order Ghangeth 


HE air of the hotel writing-room was per- 



vaded by a subtle aroma. For some time 


I had been vaguely conscious of it. But I 
was much more interested in explaining to The 
House that the orders I was mailing in were 
due to my superlative ability, and that the ones 
I had lost could not possibly have been taken at 
the prices I had been authorized to quote. 
Finally the report was finished to my satisfac- 
tion. I affixed my signature, sealed the bulky 
envelope and leaned back in my chair with a 
sigh of relief. 

Immediately I sniffed and looked about me 
suspiciously. No, I had made no mistake. I 
was in the writing-room, not the buffet. Yet 

that pervasive, reminiscent odor 

“Are you a salesman f” 

Above the little partition that divided the 
writing-desk in twain appeared a head. At the 
top was a thin, gray thatch; then came a pale 
pink dome; two bushy, gray-shot eyebrows; 
two watery-blue eyes ; a noble nose of purplish 


( 170 ) 


THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH. 


171 


hue; a straggling, sandy mustache; a loose- 
lipped mouth, and something which nature 
probably intended to be a chin. The wavering 
eyes regarded me. 

“Are you a salesman ?” repeated the voice; 
and at once I located and identified the myste- 
rious aroma. 

“Authorities differ,’ ’ I answered modestly. 
“Some say yes, some say no. Personally, I 
think I’m a world-beater.” 

The head and the tall, gaunt body attached 
thereto were at my side in an instant. A bony 
hand clutched mine. A card was thrust under 
my nose. It read: Halcyon Desk Company, 
Tarrytown, N. Y. Presented by Phineas Finny. 

‘ ‘ Shake, brother, ’ ’ said Mr. Finny. ‘ ‘ I am a 
world-beater, myself. ’ ’ 

We shook. Mr. Finny emitted a deep, shud- 
dering sigh. 

“Good-by,” I said hastily, and stood up. I 
was wishful to be thence. Anywhere, anywhere, 
into the air! One more whiff of that exhila- 
rating breath and I feared I might go forth and 
shoot up the town. It was a peach. A brandied 
peach. 


172 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 


“Not so fast, brother.” Mr. Finny ’s grip 
tightened. His mouth smiled, but there was a 
purposeful gleam in his red-rimmed eyes. 
“You are a salesman and a world-beater. You 
said so, and I believe you. You are the sorta 
man I wanta talk to. Sit down ! 9 ’ 



“ You are the sorta man I wanta talk to.” 


“Can’t stop,” I gasped. “Important busi- 
ness — see a man. ’ 9 

‘ ‘ Sit down ! ’ ’ repeated Mr. Finny. He hissed 
it this time. His grip was painful. I am a small 
man, while Mr. Finny was very large and 
knobby. We were alone in the writing-room. 
Even at that I might have taken a chance with 
him ; but while I was considering the matter he 
suddenly leaned forward and unbelted another 


THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH. 


173 


long sigh. After that I did not care. I sat 
down. 

Now, yon who have read thus far have 
probably classified this tale as an attempt at 
humorous fiction. If so, you are wrong. In all 
essential details it is a record of fact. Mr. 
Finny had indubitably looked upon drinks of 
many colors. This made his society less enjoy- 
able; but, if the proverb may be trusted, his 
story no less credible. As to the conclusions he 
drew from his experience — but first, hear the 
story : 

“That card don’t belong to me any more,” 
he said sorrowfully. “I am a man out of a job. 
Fired! And for what reason, do you suppose? 
I’ll give you three guesses.” 

“Booze?” 

“Wrong.” 

“Not enough business ? ’ ’ 

“Wrong.” 

“Too much expense account?” 

“Wrong again. You’d never guess it. I got 
fired for being too good a salesman. I took an 
order — a chunky order — at the price the fac- 
tory gave me, with never a cut nor a discount. 


174 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 


I sent it in with a letter telling how I did it. 
Two days later came a telegram from the sales 
manager saying that I’m fired. I ain’t been 
sober since. The dirty rat! He was afraid I’d 
beat him ont of his job. 

‘ 4 This is the first trip on the road I ’ve taken 
in ten years, and it’s the last I’ll ever take. 
Business men are a lot of mollycoddles these 
days. It wasn’t like that when I was making 
my reputation. No, sir! You had to keep your 
eyeteeth skinned. Why, the things I’ve done . . . 

“I started in the bridge business twenty 
years ago, when the game was good. That was 
the life, my son! There never was a job that 
wasn’t fixed. I had a regular talent that way. 
Seemed like I could smell out a bridge-letting. 
You see, the way we had it arranged, all the 
concerns that were asked to figure would send 
a representative to the town where the job was. 
The boys would get together in a room in the 
hotel and fix up who was to have the contract 
and what the price was to be. The concern that 
took the job would pay each of the others for 
putting in a higher bid. Of course an outsider 
could always kick over the apple-cart. Many a 
time I’ve shadowed a representative of one of 


TEE OLD ORDER CHANGETH. 


175 


the other companies down to the railroad sta- 
tion, found out from the ticket-agent where he 
was going, bought a ticket for the same place, 
and a few hours later walked into a meeting in 
a hotel room a hundred miles away, where I 
wasn’t expected at all — and been paid my price 



for putting in a high figure, when I didn’t even 
know what the job was. 

‘ 1 Well, I figured out an improvement on 
that scheme. I got letter-heads printed for half 
a dozen fake companies. Then I made a tour 
of the little country towns that might some day 
be in the market for bridges, got hold of the 
right people and fixed it with them to send their 
inquiries for bids only to the list of companies 


176 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE . 


I gave them. It’s surprising how far a few 
twenty-dollar bills will go with rural selectmen 
and the like. Then it was great business for a 
while. I wasn’t in competition with anybody 
but myself — my boss wasn’t, I mean. I just 
got paid a salary. By and by some muck- 
rakers got going, and before they were through 
the bridge game was all shot to pieces. My boss 
had to pay a lot of money to keep out of jail. 

4 4 So I got into the machinery game. Say, I 
tell you there were chances for a smart man in 
that business, too. The main thing was to know 
human nature. It ain’t true that every man has 
his price. Some you can’t do a thing with. 
Quality and price is all that talks with them. 
But of course one friendly machinist in a shop 
can raise a lot of trouble for your competitors’ 
machines. There’s usually at least one man in a 
shop that a smart salesman can get hold of. 

“But the boss and I fell out over a salary 
question, and I tried selling steel plates for a 
jobber. Say, man! There was a job where I 
certainly showed I had the goods. You see, my 
boss really had no license to get any business. 
He had no mill back of him. But with me on the 
selling end we took many an order right away 


THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH. 


177 


from the mill that we eventually bought the 
plates from to fill the order with. I figured out 
a scheme. You see, at that time few of the boil- 
ermakers and tankbuilders had track scales. 
A plate of a certain size was supposed to weigh 
so much, and if the weight that was billed to 
them corresponded pretty closely to the figured 
weight they never questioned it. Well, I hit on 
a mighty smart plan. If necessary I’d shade 
the mill’s price to get the business. Then I 
would have the mill that we bought the plates 
from roll them about one-sixteenth of an inch 
scant — and bill them out to the customer at a 
little more than the weight of plates of the regu- 
lar thickness. The difference showed us a good 
profit. We never were caught, and the boss 
made a lot of money out of it. 

“Then my brother died and left me his sta- 
tionery business. Down in Millville, it was. It 
was the biggest store of its kind in the town. 
I didn’t know a thing about that line; but I 
wasn’t long in finding out that my brother 
hadn’t been making the most of his opportuni- 
ties. There are just as many chances to be 
smart in that business as in any other. He had 
been going along in an easy, careless sort of 


178 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 


way, carrying nothing but high-grade goods and 
charging the same prices to everybody. I 
changed that order of things pretty quick. I 
don ’t see how he made so much money out of the 
store. He wouldn’t have if the other stores 
hadn’t been so small then. Why, half of his 
trade sent in their orders without asking prices, 
and he charged them just the same as if they 
had dickered with him! You bet I altered that 
system in a hurry. The first month I boosted 
the profits twenty per cent! It ain’t necessary 
to give customers just what they ask for, either. 
Of course people will want the stuff that is 
advertised the most; but they’ll take what you 
give them, generally. And there are lots o£ 
times you can pad your monthly statements, too. 
If your customers kick, you can always cut out 
any items they can prove they didn’t buy. 

“But there’s nothing in the stationery busi- 
ness in Millville any more. It’s different than 
it was in my brother’s day. The other stores 
have got so blamed much bigger than they used 
to he. I tried everything to boost the business. 
I spent a lot of money on boxes of cigars and in 
taking buyers out to lunch; but it wasn’t any 
use. The last two years I didn’t break even. 


THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH. 


179 


So when I got a chance to sell out my store to 
the Davenport Stationery Company I jumped at 
it. I slipped one over on Davenport, though. 
He came down, made a rough inventory, and 
bought the business — lock, stock and barrel — 
just as she stood. I didn’t guarantee a thing. 
But he raved like a wild man when he found that 
most of the boxes on the shelves were empty. 
I’ve got the stuff stored up in my attic, now. 

“Then I got a job traveling for this desk 
concern. I tell you, I was glad to get back on 
the road again ! It seemed like old times. But 
I was a fool to let that foxy sales manager know 
how smart I am. Here ’s what happened : 

4 4 The Pennacook Products Company is open- 
ing up a big office here. They need fifty desks, 
chairs and a lot of other office equipment. After 
I got the complete specifications the factory 
gave me their lowest, rock-bottom price. It 
figured up to thirty-two hundred dollars. They 
wanted the business mighty badly, but that was 
as low as they could possibly go. And it seemed 
to be low enough. I snuggled up close to Fergu- 
son, the buyer, and he didn’t make any secret of 
the fact that my goods were satisfactory and 
that my price was the lowest he had. 


180 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 


* ‘But there was one figure he was waiting 
for. He was holding off until he heard from the 
Denton Desk Company. They had written him 
that Jenkins, their representative, would call 
and submit a proposition, and they said it would 
be a very attractive one. They said Jenkins 
would be here on the twenty-fifth, and Ferguson 
insisted on waiting for him. 

“Well, you can believe that on the twenty- 
fifth, I stuck pretty close to Ferguson. I made 
my headquarters in his private office. We went 
out to lunch together and came back together. 
There hadn’t been a sign of the Denton man, 
and I begged Ferguson to give me the order and 
be done with it. But he vowed he would give 
Jenkins the benefit of a full working day. In 
case he didn’t show up by five o’clock the order 
was mine. 

“Four o’clock came, and still no Jenkins. 
About four-thirty Ferguson was called into the 
factory to inspect some machinery that was 
being installed, and I was left alone in his pri- 
vate office. The door hadn’t much more than 
closed behind him, when in pops a pretty young 
woman, her dress torn, her hair rumpled and 


THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH. 


181 


her face scratched. She was in a breathless 
hurry. 

“ 4 Oh, am I in time? Am I in time?’ she 
gasped, holding her side hard with one hand and 
pushing an envelope at me with the other. 

“ ‘ In time for what?’ I asked. 



In time for what? 


“ ‘To get the business — the order for the 
desks/ says she, panting hard. ‘I’m Mrs. 
Jenkins. My husband took me with him on this 
trip, and we tried to drive over here from 
Greendale in an auto. We had an accident and 
he was hurt — his leg was broken — but he was 
wild to get here with this proposal; and of 
course he couldn’t; but I borrowed a horse 
from a farmer and rode on the gallop all the 
way; and please look at the figures and tell me 


182 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 


if they are low enough to get the order ; and oh, 
hurry ! I must get back to Fred. ’ 

“Well, the envelope wasn’t sealed very 
tight, so I opened it and took a peek. The 
figure was thirty-one hundred dollars, and I saw 
my cake was dough. She was watching my face, 
and she saw I was disappointed — she, of 
course, taking me to be Ferguson. 

1 ‘ ‘ Oh, it isn ’t low enough ! ’ she sobbed. ‘ I ’m 
so sorry. Fred will be just heartbroken. It 
means so much to him. Can’t you give us the 
order anyhow, Mr. Ferguson ? ’ 

4 4 Then I had a smart idea. There wasn ’t one 
chance in a hundred of ever being found out. 
She thought I was Ferguson. Let her think so. 

“ 4 Sorry,’ says I, briskly. ‘I can’t give you 
the order. Business is business. Don’t let me 
keep you from your husband, Madam. ’ 

“She looked mighty sad and sort of re- 
proachful ; but she went. I was scared stiff that 
Ferguson would come in before she got away. 
As soon as she was gone I hopped over to tliQ 
window and took a look; but Ferguson wasn’t 
in sight, and I knew it would take him at least 
five minutes to get in from the machine-shop. 
There was a typewriter there in the private 


THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH. 


183 


office — machine, not girl — and in a jiffy I liad 
changed that Denton proposal to read thirty- 
four hundred dollars. Luck was all my way, for 
the type and ribbon were just the same. When 
Ferguson came in the letter was all nicely sealed 
up again and on his desk. 



The order’s yours ” says he. 


‘ ‘ 4 Girl left a letter for you, ’ says I. 

“He opened it, glanced at the figures, and 
passed it over to me to read. 

“ ‘The order’s yours, says he. 

“ ‘Then you won’t want this,’ says I, and 
before he could stop me I had torn up the 
Denton letter, thrown the pieces in the waste- 
basket, and all the incriminating evidence was 
out of the way. 

“I mailed the order to the house that same 
evening; and I was so pleased over the smart 


184 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 


trick I had played that I wrote the sales man- 
ager telling him all about it. Look at the tele- 
gram the dirty pnp sent me. ’ ’ 

Mr. Finny handed me a much-rumpled yel- 
low slip. My esteem for the Halcyon Desk Com- 
pany took a mighty bound upward as I read : 

Phineas Finny , Gruberville , III.: 

You are an unspeakable cur. Order not accepted. Am 
acquainting both Pennacook and Denton Companies with the 
facts. Hope Denton prosecutes you. Will lend any assistance 
necessary, using your letter as evidence. You are fired. 

Sales Manager. 

“The cowardly rabbit !” stormed Mr. 
Finny. “Any business man knows that I did 
a mighty smart thing. All that’s the matter 
with the sales manager is that he’s afraid I’ll 
get his job!” 


A Problem of Policy 

I N tlie private office of the Prime Adding 
Machine Company’s Millville branch, Fred 
Grayson, the manager, studied the reports 
for the previous week. He had just returned 
from a brief vacation, and was endeavoring to 
bring himself back to his usual condition of 
absolute familiarity with every detail of the 
business. 

Presently he frowned and jabbed a button on 
his desk. 

“If Mr. Bryce is in the outer office, tell him 
I want to see him, ’ ’ he commanded the office-boy. 

A moment later William Bryce walked 
briskly in, secure in the knowledge that on 
the big blackboard which recorded the results 
of the month’s sales campaign his name led all 
the rest. For more than two years he had 
been recognized as the star salesman of the 
organization. 

“Sit down, Billy,” invited his chief. He 
tossed across the flat desk the report which had 
caused the frown. “What does that mean!” 


(1S5) 


186 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 


Dapper little Bryce glanced at the offending 
bit of paper, and smiled. 

‘ ‘ Oh, that, ’ ’ he said, airily, ‘ ‘ is a case where 
yours truly lost his temper. A month ago I put 
a machine on trial in the office of the Imperial 
Skirt Company — Gresselstein’s concern. Last 



Monday I dropped in there and took the order. 
It is signed by Adolph Greenhardt, the treas- 
urer, and it is perfectly good. On Friday, 
Solomon Gresselstein came in from New York 
and sent for me to come to see him. And what 
do you suppose he wanted? ” 

Grayson shook his head. “Pm not much of 
a guesser.” 


A PROBLEM OF POLICY. 


187 


“He said that they weren’t getting enough 
service out of the machine to suit him. He 
wanted me — me — to take charge of their hill- 
ing department and run the machine for a few 
days, so as to show them how to get the most out 
of it!” 

4 ‘ And of course you said you would be glad 
to.” 

Bryce stared. Then he grinned* 

“For a second I almost thought you meant 
that. I told Gresselstein that I was a salesman 
— not a machine operator. I was perfectly 
courteous and pleasant about it, although the 
nerve of him made me pretty sore. He said that 
if a man of my intelligence couldn’t operate the 
machine, it wouldn’t be much use to the class of 
help he employed. I told him I could run it ; but 
that I had other things to do. 

“It’s funny how a quarrel starts. Before I 
realized it we were talking at the top of our 
voices and exchanging uncomplimentary per- 
sonalities. The affair wound up by Gressel- 
stein saying that we were a bunch of cheats and 
flimflammers, and that he would not keep the 
machine. I told him that we had his order, 
properly signed, and that he would either pay 


188 


THE SPIRIT OF SER VICE. 


for the machine or stand suit. And there the 
matter rests/ ’ 

Grayson’s boyish face, sun-tanned from his 
vacation, was a study in mixed emotions. If he 
had followed the impulse of the moment he 
would have shaken the complacent little man on 
the other side of the desk until his teeth rattled. 
But he mastered the impulse. For all his well- 
nigh insufferable conceit, Bryce was a man 
whom it would be hard to replace, and Grayson 
knew it. 

‘ ‘ Do you call that giving this company 
proper representation ?” he questioned. 

“Huh?” Bryce was plainly surprised. 
“Why, we’ve got him dead to rights, I tell you. 
He’s got to pay up. I thought you’d send our 
attorney up to see him. ’ ’ 

By this time Grayson had himself well under 
control. He was silent for a long moment, 
searching his brain for words that would make 
the situation clear to the self-satisfied salesman, 
without losing his really valuable services to the 
Prime Adding Machine Company. 

“Billy,” he said at length, “business doesn’t 
thrive on lawsuits, nor on dissatisfied custom- 
ers. I don’t blame you for losing your temper. 


A PROBLEM OF POLICY. 


189 


We’re all likely to do that, when we least expect 
to. But that’s no reason why, after the smoke 
clears away and we see how foolish we have 
been, we shouldn’t go back over the trail and 
repair the damage. If I were you, I’d call on 
Gresselstein and bury the hatchet. You can do 
more for us than a lawyer could.” 

Bryce laughed, easily. 4 ‘I’ll repair the dam- 
age, all right. I’ll go out and sell another 
machine. ’ ’ 

‘ ‘ Somewhere else ? ’ ’ 

“Of course.” 

“That will not repair the damage. The 
damage is in leaving a potential user of adding 
machines feeling that he has had bad treatment 
at the hands of our company. ’ ’ 

Bryce stood up. “If you think I’m going 
back to that sweat-shop and let Solomon Gres- 
selstein feed me humble-pie, you’ve got one 
more guess coming to you. I’ll quit my job 
first.” And he stalked angrily out of the office. 

Grayson stared after him dejectedly. “Asa 
diplomat I’m more or less of a cheese,” he told 
himself. ‘ ‘ I wish Blair would come in. Maybe 
he could tell me how to handle Billy. ’ ’ 


190 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE . 


Before many minutes his wish was granted. 
Big Dennis Blair, the assistant manager, puffed 
into the room, with one handkerchief tucked 
around his neck inside his collar, and with 
another energetically mopping the perspiration 
from his crimson face. 

“Lord, this is tough weather for a fat man!” 
he grunted, dropping into a chair and fanning 
himself with his hat. Then he noticed Gray- 
son’s disgruntled expression. “Hello!” he 
exclaimed. “You look as if something had dis- 
agreed with you. ’ ’ 

“Dennis,” said Grayson, “did Bryce tell 
you about his run-in with Gresselstein ! ’ ’ 

Blair nodded. “Billy was exactly right, of 
course,” he commented carelessly. 

The young manager looked at him in despair. 
“Do you mean to tell me that you would have 
refused to demonstrate the machine?” 

“Of course I wouldn’t, and I don’t believe 
Bryce did, either. Ten to one he demonstrated 
it on the day he put it in on trial. Any time they 
had sent for him while they were considering 
the purchase Bryce would have given them a 
demonstration. You don’t seem to understand 
that this sale had actually been made. Bryce’s 


A PROBLEM OF POLICY. 


191 


job was done. Anyhow, they wanted more than 
a demonstration. If you bought a typewriter 
you wouldn’t expect the salesman to give you a 
course in the touch system, would you ? ’ ’ 

i ‘ I might not expect it, if I were the buyer, ’ ’ 
said Grayson slowly. “But if I were selling 



Billy was exactly right, of course J 


typewriters and the customer seemed to expect 
instruction, I certainly would do my darndest 
to satisfy him. I wouldn’t feel that I had done 
my job properly unless he was satisfied. You 
can’t build a business on individual sales. 
There is the future to be considered.” 

“There wouldn’t be any future, so far as 
this case is concerned. That one machine will 


192 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 


do all of Gresselstein’s work for a good many 
years to come. If there had been another sale in 
sight, Billy Bryce would be up there teaching 
the young idea how to punch the keys this very 
minute. ’ ’ 

Grayson’s fist smote the flat desk. “That’s 
the very principle — or lack of principle — that 
I’m complaining about. It’s the old, non- 
constructive, ‘ let-the-buyer-beware ’ attitude. 
When I quit bookkeeping to sell adding ma- 
chines I wasn’t attracted by the money alone. 
I seriously thought I was going to help along the 
cause of business efficiency. It gives me just as 
much pleasure to equip an office properly as it 
does a surgeon to perform a delicate operation. 
It seems strange to me that the rest of the sales 
force doesn’t feel the same way.” 

Dennis Blair laughed and looked quizzically 
at the earnest young man who sat in the swivel 
chair which Dennis himself had once occupied. 

“Grayson, don’t think I still bear malice 
because you beat me out of the managership of 
the office. I got over that long ago. But I 
hired you when all you knew about adding 
machines was what you had picked up for your- 
self by operating one in the Millville Bank. 


A PROBLEM OF POLICY. 


193 


You’ve had some spectacular successes since 
then; but after all, your experience is very, 
very limited. When you have been beating the 
pavement as long as Bryce and I have, you’ll 
get over those missionary ideas.” 

4 ‘ What would you advise me to do about this 
Gresselstein-Bryce controversy ! ’ ’ 

“I think I’d let it rest the way it is. The 
Imperial Skirt Company will not risk a lawsuit 
on a dead-open-and-shut case like that. Prob- 
ably you’ll get a check from them in a few days. 
If you don’t, our lawyer can bring them to time 
by threatening to sue. In any case, don’t get 
Bryce stirred up any worse than he is. He 
thinks you are trying to humiliate him. ’ ’ 

4 ‘ Oh, he ought to know better than that. ’ ’ 

4 ‘Well, he doesn’t. And I’d go a little 
slowly, if I were you. Billy Bryce is too darned 
good a man to lose. In his present frame of 
mind he’d as soon quit his job as look at you — 
and the Skeleton Calculator Company would 
snap him up like a chicken would a bug. Better 
forget the Gresselstein order, I say.” 

This advice Grayson found very hard to fol- 
low. Outwardly acquiescing, he turned the con- 
versation to other matters; and when, later in 


194 THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 

the day, he had occasion to speak to Bryce, the 
Gresselstein order was not mentioned. Yet the 
problem dwelt in the back of the manager’s 
mind, and at every leisure moment it would 
jump to the front for consideration. 

He carried it home with him that evening, 
and later violated one of the favorite rules of 
the matrimonial experts by talking it over with 
his wife. 

“It isn’t that I care so much about the sale 
itself,” he told his unfailingly sympathetic lis- 
tener. “Bryce has more to lose if the order 
were canceled than I have. It is a f our-hundred- 
dollar machine. The office is credited with 
twenty-five per cent on the sale, of which Bryce 
gets three-fifths. He stands to lose sixty dol- 
lars, whereas the office — which is your hand- 
some husband — would be out only forty 
dollars. Anyhow, as Bryce and Blair say, Gres- 
selstein can be made to pay up. ’ ’ 

“In that case, why not drop the matter, as 
Mr. Blair suggests?” 

“You, too, Brutus?” he groaned. “There 
are several reasons why I don’t drop the mat- 
ter. One is that if I did I’d lose a lot of ground 


A PROBLEM OF POLICY. 


195 


with my sales force. It has been no easy matter 
to get that bunch of old-timers to take me 
seriously. If I give ’em an inch they’ll want to 
take the whole territory. Good salesman as he 
is, I’m not sure that in the long run it wouldn’t 
be better to let Bryce go than to allow him to 



decide a matter of policy like this — particu- 
larly when his ideas and mine are so radically 
different. 

“The real reason, though — the big reason 
— is that Bryce’s method is non-constructive. 
It is the old, give-me-my-profit-and-I-don’t-care- 
what-happens idea. It is business reduced to 
its lowest terms. I don ’t like it. ’ ’ 


196 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE . 


“You say ‘the old idea/ ” commented his 
wife. “Isn’t business just the same to-day as 
it always has been — a scramble for money?” 

“I suppose so; but the rules have changed. 
The banker and the loan-shark spring from a 
common commercial ancestor, and their busi- 
ness in its essentials is the same: they both 
draw a profit from lending money. But one 
plays the game in accordance with the new 
rules, while the other sticks to the old. One is 
constructive, while the other is not. You can’t 
class them together, for all the similarity of 
their aims.” 

“Yet bankers seem to make more money 
than loan-sharks,” she suggested. “That 
doesn’t argue unselfishness on their part.” 

“Granted. But let me ask you something, 
Minnie. Which way of doing business do you 
think is the cleaner? If the rewards were the 
same, which profession would you prefer to 
have your husband follow — banking or Shy- 
locking?” 

“Banking,” she said promptly. “It’s more 
respectable. Don’t think I misunderstand you, 
Fred. But from what you tell me of Mr. Bryce 
I doubt if he’ll let you ease your commercial 


A PROBLEM OF POLICY. 


197 


conscience at his expense. If your way is the 
more profitable, as well as being nicer, you 
ought to be able to demonstrate it before asking 
him to change a system that he has been follow- 
ing for years.’ ’ 

Grayson puffed meditatively at his pipe. 
He was silent so long that his wife feared some- 
thing in her remark had offended him. She 
looked at him inquiringly. 

“Did I rub your fur the wrong way, Fred?” 
“No, but you gave me something to think 
about. Do you know, Minnie, that if I could do 
the thing you suggest — could show the boys 
that there was really more money in doing busi- 
ness along constructive lines — it would just 
about solve all my business problems? I’ve 
been trying to figure out a plan. ’ ’ 

“Couldn’t you tell a fellow?” she coaxed. 
“There’s really nothing to tell. Before I 
went on my vacation I heard a rumor that 
would give me something to start a campaign 
on — if it’s true. If it isn’t true, my vague 
scheme will probably die a-borning. The first 
thing I want to do is to verify that rumor. ’ ’ 

The next morning Grayson was uncharacter- 
istically late at the office ; but his tardiness was 


198 


TIIE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 


not caused by oversleeping, nor yet by loitering 
in front of shop- windows. Instead, he left his 
apartment rather earlier than his wont, and 
though his first port of call was the Mammoth 
Emporium — Millville’s most important depart- 
ment store — he passed by the attractive win- 
dow displays and made his way to the office of 
Hermann Weisbaum, the head cashier. 

At sight of the adding machine salesman the 
plump little man with the shoe-brush mustache 
raised his hands in mock horror. 

‘ 4 Spare my ears ! I ask it of you, Mr. Gray- 
son. Of the weather, of baseball, of the war 
with Mexico I will talk with you. But not about 
your machine. Anything but that!” 

“Oh, well,” grinned Grayson, “if you feel 
that way about it, suppose we discuss invest- 
ments.” 

An hour later he entered the office of the 
Prime Adding Machine Company, without hav- 
ing made a sale, but possessing the bit of infor- 
mation which had been the prime object of his 
call on Weisbaum. As he passed through the 
outer office, where the salesmen were preparing 
to start out on their rounds, he beckoned to 


A PROBLEM OF POLICY. 199 

Blair and Bryce and led the way into the pri- 
vate office. 

“ Dennis,’ ’ he said to the bulky assistant 
manager, “I wish you would take charge of the 
business for a few days.” And then to Bryce, 
who was bristling with rancor : 

‘ ‘ Cheer up, Billy ! Fm not going to ask you 
to do a thing you don J t want to do. Because we 
disagree on a question of selling methods is no 
sign that I fail to appreciate your value to this 
company. You have your theories and I have 
mine. I take it that what we are both interested 
in is to make sure which theory is correct. Am 
I right?” 

Bryce nodded, grudgingly. “I suppose so,” 
he agreed. 

“We both want to make money — to use the 
method that will give us the biggest returns.” 

Again the little salesman nodded. 

“As I understand it, your theory of sales- 
manship is to expend all your effort in making 
the actual sale, and when that is done to con- 
sider the job complete and hustle on to the next 
prospect. You feel that you have little more 
interest in what happens after the sale is made 
than — well, than a workman who made nothing 


200 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE . 


but boe-liandles would have in the completed 
article. If you get the contract properly signed, 
the incident is closed, so far as you are con- 
cerned. ’ ’ 

“I work on commission — commission for 
sales said Bryce doggedly. “If this company 
wants to pay me a salary for doing some other 
kind of work, I’ll consider it — if the salary is 
big enough.” 

“I’m not criticizing your attitude. I merely 
wish to know if I have stated it correctly. ’ ’ 

Bryce considered the matter. “Yes,” he 
said. “You’re not far wrong. Of course, if a 
concern is likely to buy more machines it is still 
a prospect, and it’s to my interest to see that the 
first machine works to the limit. But where one 
machine is all there is going to be, I’m done as 
soon as the sale is made.” 

“Thank you, Billy,” said his employer. 
“That makes your position clear. Now, let me 
tell you my theory. I believe a salesman’s job 
isn’t done until his customer feels that he has 
received full value for his money. Whether a 
man is a potential user of one machine or of a 
hundred, the principle is just the same. The 
man who said : ‘ A satisfied customer is the best 


A PROBLEM OF POLICY. 


201 


advertisement ’ was working along the right 
lines — according to me. ’ ’ 

Bryce had been waiting impatiently for 
Grayson to finish. 

‘ 4 Yes, yes, ’ ’ he snapped out , i ‘ the best adver- 
tisement I’ll grant you — for the company. But 
what does it get me? I’m not paid for adver- 
tising. I’m paid for selling machines — and 
only for those I, personally, sell. And, believe 
me, I follow the system that makes me, per- 
sonally, the most money!” 

Grayson smiled. ‘ 4 That’s the system I want 
you to follow. I think mine is the one. You 
think yours is. You sold Gresselstein a machine 
which, unless his company grows amazingly, 
will be all he will need for a long time to come. 
He is angry and dissatisfied; but the sale will 
stand and the account can be collected. So you 
are satisfied. The time you might have spent 
putting him in a good humor you can spend in 
hunting new business. That’s your system. 

“Now, I’d like to try my system on him. I 
want to go up there and work until his clerks 
are operating the machine at its maximum effi- 
ciency, and until he feels that a Prime Adding 
Machine salesman is not only a model of fair 


202 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 


dealing but a benefactor to the business world. 
It may take me one day and it may take a week ; 
but I’ll put in my time for the sake of the adver- 
tisement — for the company. If results show in 
your own territory I’ll expect you to agree with 
me that my system beats yours from the sales- 
man’s standpoint. There is no question as to 
which is better for the company.” 

“Nay, nay!” jeered Bryce. “You could eas- 
ily claim any sales I made. I’ll give you a list 
of my stickers — concerns that are dead pros- 
pects. If you sell any of them — through Gres- 
selstein, mind you — why, then I ’ll believe there 
may be something for Billy Bryce in this Uto- 
pian plan. ’ ’ 

“Good enough! Give me a list of concerns 
that ought to use machines, but refuse to con- 
sider them. ’ ’ 

“Well, we will begin,” said Bryce, “with the 
prize lemon, the Mammoth Emporium. They 
won’t even let you discuss the matter with 
them. ’ ’ And he reeled off the names of perhaps 
a dozen concerns whose rooted aversion to add- 
ing machines had caused even his stout heart to 
despair. 


A PROBLEM OF POLICY. 


203 


“They’re stickers, all right,” agreed Gray- 
son ruefully, as he jotted down the names. “At 
least you’ll agree that I’m giving you all the 
best of the proposition. ’ ’ 

“You surely are,” grinned Bryce, his good 
humor completely restored. “You haven’t a 
chance in the world. ’ ’ 

And with these scarcely reassuring words in 
his ears Grayson went down to see Gresselstein. 

It was an unpleasant task which the young 
manager had set for himself. Solomon Gres- 
selstein was a graduate of the Hester street 
school of finance, and his attitude toward the 
world was one of suspicion at all times. In the 
case of the Prime Adding Machine Company 
suspicion had crystallized into a certainty. He 
felt that he had been swindled, and while he 
knew that eventually he would have to pay for 
the machine, he was disposed to make the proc- 
ess of collection a slow and expensive one for 
the swindlers. 

However, his pride was gratified by the fact 
that the manager of the branch office was giving 
the matter his personal attention, and he grudg- 
ingly permitted Grayson to undertake the 


204 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE . 


instruction of his billing department. Gradu- 
ally, as his shrewd brain mastered the possibili- 
ties of the machine, his interest increased and 
his resentment disappeared. When, at the end 
of the fourth day, Grayson demonstrated that 
the services of an assistant bookkeeper could be 
dispensed with, the thrifty Hebrew became posi- 
tively enthusiastic. 

‘ ‘ Tventy dollars a veek saved ! ’ ’ he exulted. 
“Dot iss a dousand dollars a year. Yes. Mein 
Gott! Vy did I not buy dot machine a year 
ago ! ’ ’ 

“You’re satisfied with it, then, Mr. Gressel- 
stein?” smiled Grayson. 

“It iss a goot machine, and I shall keep it,” 
agreed the president of the Imperial Skirt Com- 
pany. After a moment’s consideration he sug- 
gested tentatively: “In gwantities dere iss a 
big discoundt. Yes f ” 

“You couldn’t use another machine here to 
advantage, ’ ’ said the salesman. 

“I haf gonnections dot might use many 
machines — if der price vas right. You may 
hear from dem. I say no more. ’ ’ 

“If you ever were aboard a yacht,” said 
Grayson to his wife not many evenings later, 


A PROBLEM OF POLICY . 


205 


“and saw a slightly slower boat a few lengths 
ahead of you, scooting along with its rail in a 
smother of foam, spray flying and its pennant 
snapping like a whip, you’ll have a fair picture 




of what Billy Bryce looked like when I came into 
the office this morning. While I was down at 
Gresselstein’s teaching his bookkeepers how to 
get the most out of that one machine — which 
was already sold, anyhow — Bryce had made six 
sales. Which is going some, I’ll admit. He 


206 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 


thought he had shown me up, and for a while I 
let him think so. ’ ’ 

“And then — ” questioned his wife eagerly. 

“If you footed it fast enough, pretty soon 
you might see the leading boat straighten up 
suddenly, lose headway, and flounder about with 
its sails flapping and its pennant drooping. 
You’d have taken the wind out of its sails. 
Well, that will give you an idea of the way Billy 
looked when I tossed over to him an order from 
the Mammoth Emporium for twenty-four ma- 
chines — the biggest individual order this office 
has taken in six months. And on it was 
endorsed: ‘this order is placed because of 
Mr. Solomon Gresselstein ’s recommendation.’ 
They put that on at my request; but it was 
absolutely true. It was in Bryce’s territory, 
and he’ll get his commission just as if he had 
taken the order. But, say ! He ’s eating out of 
my hands, now. And so is the rest of the sales 
force.” 

“But, Fred!” cried his wife. “It’s — it’s 
perfectly miraculous. It almost looks as if you 
had known what was coming. ’ ’ 

“Between you and me, Minnie,” he admit- 
ted, “I did have a mighty strong suspicion of 


A PROBLEM OF POLICY. 


207 


what was going to happen. The only reason the 
Mammoth Emporium has not installed adding 
machines long ago is that Moses Goldberg, the 
owner, could never be made to see beyond the 
initial expenditure. He never would allow one 
to be put in on trial, and he wouldn’t even let a 
salesman tell his story. I’ve known for a long 
time that if ever one machine began to put 
money in his pocket he would equip his whole 
establishment with them. Moses is not much of 
a gambler, but he surely does love a sure thing. ’ 9 

“But where does Gresselstein come in!” 

“Oh, that was the basis of my whole 
scheme,” grinned her husband. “Before I 
went on my vacation I heard a rumor that Gold- 
berg was buying an interest in the Imperial 
Skirt Company. I verified that rumor before I 
put myself on record with Bryce. If we made a 
good showing at the Skirt Company, I knew 
Gresselstein would report it to Goldberg, and 
the, rest would be easy . 9 9 

Minnie Grayson looked at her husband accus- 
ingly. “I don’t think you are being quite fair 
to Mr. Bryce. It wasn’t your system that won. 
It was special information that you had.” 


208 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 


6 4 Not by a long shot! Don’t you see that if 
Bryce had used my system from the first — if 
he had satisfied Gresselstein without my inter- 
vention — the order would have come in just the 
same ; and that if my system hadn ’t been used 
the order would have been lost!” 


“I see,” she admitted. 


The Bald Spot 



l HE Annual Dinner of the Hecla Sales 


Company was over, and the forty soldiers 


of commerce trooped out of the private 
dining-room and into the hotel lobby. Here, by 
the natural gravitation of like to like, the crowd 
divided into its three component parts — the 
Starters, the Comers and the Arrived. There 
were no Goers. In the lexicon of the Hecla 
Sales Company the word 4 ‘ sentiment’ ’ did not 
appear. When a man ’s sales percentages began 
to drop it was time for him to hunt another job. 

In the ranks of the Arrived there were four 
— Weeks on the West Side, Heberer on the 
North, Bayley on the South, whil6 Trent, the 
brightest luminary in that stellar group, com- 
manded the cream of the Loop trade. Usually 
after these dinners they would go to Bayley J s 
club, where they would pass the remainder of 
the evening in the mild dissipation of penny 
ante. 

“Did somebody say something !” questioned 
the dapper little Weeks, as he swung on Heb- 


( 209 ) 


210 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 


erer's arm. “Has Bayley's gilded den of vice 
been raided by the reformers, or do I get a run 
for my money ?” 

“Surest thing you know,” Bayley assured 
him. 4 4 1 expect to take a year 's dues away from 
you innocents. But where's Billy Trent?” He 
peered about the lobby with those spectacled, 
near-sighted eyes that, so rumor ran, could see 
right into a customer 's brain and read the com- 
petitive figures engraved thereon. 

“If you are looking for Mr. Trent,” volun- 
teered Orham, one of the new salesmen, “he left 
just after dinner. Said he was going home.” 

The talented trio exchanged surprised 
glances. Big Heberer burst into a roar of 
laughter. 

‘ 6 I believe, ' ' he rumbled, ‘ ‘ 1 actually believe 
Billy is sore over my joking him about his hair. 
Well, what do you know about that! Who'd 
have thought he'd be so sensitive? Why, I'd 
trade every hair I've got for a territory like 
his!” 

“I'd like a shot at that territory, myself,” 
said Orham thoughtfully. 

Meanwhile Trent was moodily traversing the 
three blocks that intervened between the car 


THE BALD SPOT. 


211 


line and his neat suburban home. He felt out- 
raged, indignant; yet underneath it all was a 
curious sensation of worry. He resented the 



“ Why , Will Trent! There’s a bald spot ” 


pawing of his head and the crude buffoonery 
that accompanied it; but after all, he assured 
himself, it was just Heberer’s elemental idea of 
humor. Why, he was barely forty. Certainly 


212 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE . 


he was not old. He jerked off his^ hat and 
explored with nervous fingers the spot on his 
crown where Heberer had penciled a circle. 
The thatch did seem a little thin there. Sud- 
denly he noticed his shadow, which the arc light 
cast on the sidewalk before him. The wavering 
figure looked fat, sagging. 

A little later Mrs. Trent found her husband 
engaged in some mysterious gymnastics before 
the pier glass in the bedroom. 

“What in the world are you trying to do 
with my hand mirror ? ’ ’ she demanded. 

“I’m trying to see the top of my head,”. he 
growled, “and I can’t make the blamed thing 
work. Have a look yourself. ’ ’ 

“Why, Will Trent!” she cried excitedly as 
he bent his head for her inspection, “There’s a 
bald spot as big as a silver dollar ! ’ ’ 

# # # # 

In the offices of the Hecla Sales Company 
hang many mottoes which accurately express 
the spirit of the management. “GET BUSI- 
NESS OR GET OUT,” says one; “WE DON’T 
CARE WHAT YOU HAVE DONE — WHAT 
ARE YOU DOING TO-DAY f” says another; 


THE BALD SPOT. 


213 


“NO ROOM HERE FOR DEAD ONES — 
TRY THE MORGUE,” reads a third. They 
are meant to kindle the fire of fear, which is the 
fear of being fired. 



The morning after the Annual Dinner, Trent 
found a tattered wig on his desk, also a high- 
ball-inspired note signed by Heberer, Bayley 
and Weeks, commenting on the vagaries of Age. 


214 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 


Ordinarily the joke would have appealed to 
William; but now, with the acrid thought of 
failing energy eating his heart, he sprang up in 
a cold fury and stalked over to Heberer’s desk. 

“What does this mean, you big beast ?” he 
demanded fiercely, the note extended in his 
trembling hand. 

Heberer’s never too even temper had not 
been improved by the slight excesses of the 
night before. He was in no mood to conciliate. 

“It means that you’re eligible for the Down 
and Out Club,” he sneered, glaring at Trent 
with red-rimmed eyes. “You’re too old to take 
a joke. Don’t you know, you doddering idiot, 
that the office is no place to start trouble?” 

“I want you to understand ” shrilled 

Trent. 

“Aw, get back to work,” snarled Heberer, 
“I’m busy. Read the mottoes if you haven’t 
anything else to do, but don ’t come around here 
and bother me. Why don’t you pick on some- 
body of your own age?” 

Involuntarily Trent’s eyes swept the walls, 
and for the first time the cynical messages 
seemed to have a personal meaning for him. 
He went back to his desk in a sort of daze, and 


THE BALD SPOT . 


215 


in a daze he remained throughout the morning. 
As a result a big order which he had been work- 
ing on for months slipped into the eager hands 



You seem to have lost your grip on the trade” 


of a rival concern, and Trent fell heir to the 
first serious reprimand he had received in many 
years. 

That was the beginning. 


216 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 


Six months later the Sales Manager stopped 
beside William’s desk. 

“ Trent,” he said in cold, impersonal tones, 
“turn over to Orham the papers on that Com- 
monwealth deal. I’m going to try him out in 
the section between Adams and Madison. You 
seem to have lost your grip on that trade.” 

And that, to all intents and purposes, was 
the end. 

* # * # 

An hour after the next Annual Dinner was 
over, Orham, Heberer, Weeks and Baylev were 
seated around a card table in the latter’s club. 

‘ 4 Seems kind of funny and sad not to have 
old Billy Trent here,” commented Heberer, as 
he shuffled the cards. 6 ‘Last year was a bad one 
for him. I never saw a man go to pieces so. 
The year before he was the top-notch salesman 
of the bunch. Then he seemed to get old all at 
once, and in six months he was so rotten bad 
they had to fire him. I can ’t understand it. ’ ’ 

“It gave me my chance,” said Orham, “and 
I’ll not be hypocrite enough to pretend I’m 
sorry. Just the same, it does seem too bad.” 

“Well, you are almost as much of a mys- 
tery, young man, ’ ’ put in Weeks. ‘ ‘You showed 


TEE BALD SPOT. 


217 


no signs of class until after the first of the year. 
Then you suddenly began to go like a house 
afire, until I really was afraid for my job. If 
poor old Trent hadn’t gone to pieces I guess 
you’d have been stepping on some toes that are 
under this table right now. ’ ’ 



" Gentlemen, behold! ” 

Orham’s lean, deeply lined face lighted up 
with a smile. 

“If you want to know what got me going,” 
he said, “I’ll tell you. Heberer did it.” 


“ I ? ” roared the giant, 1 1 How f ’ ’ 


218 


THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE. 


Orham folded his five cards and with them 
tapped the table reflectively. 

“At the dinner a year ago you four sat side 
by side and I was directly across the table from 
you. Do you remember, Heberer, doing some- 
thing that made Trent so angry he was ready 
to fight you, so angry that he went home right 
after dinner ?” 

“Vaguely, I do,” admitted Heberer. “I 
believe I mussed his hair, or something of the 
sort.” 

“You pulled his head down on the table and 
called everybody to witness that he was going 
bald. You penciled a ring around the spot and 
swore that it was as big as a dollar. You told 
him that he was too old to stand the gaff, and 
advised him to retire before he was Oslerized.” 

“Sol did, ’ ’ guffawed the other, ‘ ‘ and it was 
pretty good advice, too, the way things turned 
out. But what has that got to do with you?” 

“Just this : Though I may not look it, I am 
forty-two years old. It struck me that if I was 
ever going to accomplish anything, it was high 
time I got started, especially if the Hecla crowd 
believed in the Osier theory. Moreover, your 


THE BALD SPOT. 


219 


words particularly impressed me, because’ ’ — • 
he bowed his head on the table — ‘ ‘ Gentlemen, 
behold ! 9 9 

The three leaned forward; then they fell 
back with shouts of laughter. 

On Orham’s crown, half concealed by the 
long, dark hair that surrounded it, was a bald 
spot, twice the size of a silver dollar. 


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